In order to investigate clinicopathological characteristics and prognosis of mixed invasive ductal and lobular carcinoma (IDC-L), 209,109 primary breast cancer patients diagnosed with invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC), invasive lobular carcinoma (ILC) or IDC-L were included. It was found that IDC-L patients had lower tumor grade and higher hormone receptor positive proportions than IDC patients. Moreover, IDC-L patients were younger and had a similar hormone receptor status compared with ILC patients. Kaplan-Meier plots showed that the breast cancer-specific survival (BCSS) of IDC-L patients was significantly better than IDC patients (P < 0.001) and tended to be better than ILC patients (P = 0.166). However, after adjusting for clinicopathological factors, survival advantage of IDC-L disappeared. Subgroup analysis indicated that IDC-L had higher hazard ratios (HRs) than IDC in grade 1, grade 2, ER-positive and ER-negative subgroups. Survival analysis in ER-positive and ER-negative subgroups showed that IDC-L predicted a worse prognosis than IDC. In conclusion, IDC-L is a distinct histological subtype compared with IDC and ILC. Lower grade and higher ER-positive proportions mainly contribute to its better prognosis. In both ER-positive and ER-negative subgroups, IDC-L predicts worse prognosis than IDC, which suggested the inadequacy of IDC-based therapy and the need of escalated therapy.