The purpose of this study was to evaluate the strategy of haploidentical (HID) stem cell combined with a small doses of umbilical cord blood (UCB) from a third-party donor transplantation (haplo-cord transplant) for treatment of myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS), by comparing with identical-sibling donor (ISD) transplantation. Eighty-five patients were included between January 2012 and December 2015, with a median 40 years old. Forty-eight patients received haplo-cord transplant and 37 patients received ISD transplant. Haplograft engraftment succeeded in all haplo-cord patients. For haplo-cord and ISD transplantation, adjusted cumulative incidences of grades 2-4 acute GvHD at 100 days were 27 and 11% (P=0.059); adjusted cumulative incidences of chronic GvHD at 2 years were 22 and 34% (P=0.215). The 2-year adjusted probabilities of overall survival were 64 and 70% (P=0.518), and of relapse-free survival were 56 and 66% (P=0.306). The 2-year adjusted cumulative incidences of relapse were 12 and 14% (P=0.743), and of non-relapse mortality were 33 and 23% (P=0.291). In conclusion, haplo-cord-HSCT achieves outcomes similar to those of ISD-HSCT for MDS and the haplo-cord-HSCT may potentially improve the outcome of HID- and UCB-HSCT alone. Thus, the haplo-cord transplantation may be a better valid alternative for MDS when an ISD is not available.