Abstract: The carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) composite parts with variable thickness possessed the advantages of material saving, weight reduction, and elastic tailoring properties, and were often used in important application such as wing structures. However, dropping-off plies between layers caused a discontinuity inside the part. Therefore, uneven residual stress could be generated after the curing, and the complex cure-induced distortion (CID) appeared after demolding. For the prediction of the CID of CFRP parts with variable thickness, the existing research mainly adopted the modeling method of equivalent material parameters, without considering the structural characteristics of the resin pocket. In this paper, based on the laminated modeling method, the resin pocket structure was introduced at the dropping-off plies position, and the numerical simulation model of the CID was established. Compared with the results of the traditional equivalent modeling method, the traditional laminated modeling method and experiment, it is proved that the proposed model has the preferable accuracy, the error of the simulated CID is only 1.01×10⁻² mm compared with the experimental result, and the deformation trend is consistent. The influence of different ply drop-off patterns, taper section slopes, and thickness-to-thin ratios on the CID was analyzed. The part with a dispersed ply drop-off pattern presents the smallest CID, and the part with the overlapped ply drop-off pattern has the largest CID. Increasing the taper section slope and reducing the thickness ratio can effectively reduce the warpage.