Patients with early-stage cervical cancer may be treated appropriately with either radical surgery or radiation therapy. As most patients will be cured of their disease, side-effects of therapy and quality of life become of great importance. Individualization of treatment to reduce therapy-associated morbidity should be the main goal in cervical cancer management. Recent developments in surgical techniques, such as laparoscopy, nerve-sparing radical hysterectomy, sentinel lymph node biopsy, trachelectomy and 'less radical' hysterectomy, have contributed to reduce the morbidity of the surgical treatment. The use of postoperative radiotherapy or chemoradiation leads to more pronounced side effects than after either surgery or irradiation alone. Therefore, prognostic factors should be used to select patients for either surgery or radiotherapy alone to minimize the increased toxicities associated with the combination. The objectives of this review are to discuss the evidence supporting radical surgery, 'less radical' surgery and radiotherapy with regard to complication rate and quality of life.