To assess the association between established clinicopathological variables and the 21-gene recurrence score (RS) stratification of invasive lobular carcinoma (ILC) of the breast. We identified 9030 ILC patients from the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results database. Older age, higher grade tumor and progesterone receptor (PR)-negative disease were independent predictors of high-risk RS stratification. Among patients with PR-positive tumors, 3, 6 and 15% with well-differentiated (G1), moderately-differentiated (G2) and poorly and/or undifferentiated (G3) disease were in the high-risk cohort, respectively. In patients with PR-negative tumors: 16, 24 and 41% of patients with G1, G2 and G3 disease were in the high-risk cohort, respectively. The 21-gene RS testing may not be necessary for patients with PR+/G1-2 ILC.