Mycosis fungoides (MF) is the most common type of cutaneous lymphoma. The early stage of MF is a difficult diagnostic case, as it is often confused with many benign inflammatory dermatoses (BID). The study aimed to evaluate the diagnostic utility of TOX, FOXP3, CDD4. and GATA3 in differentiating early stages of MF from histologically overlapping BID lesions. A retrospective cross-sectional study was performed, in which immunohistochemistry (IHC) was used to evaluate the expression of TOX, FOXP3, CD4 and GATA3 in formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) sections of skin lesions from 30 cases with BID and 30 patients with early-stage MF. The association between TOX expression and early-stage MF was statistically significant (P <0.001). TOX had the highest sensitivity of 96.77% and accuracy of 85.71% in diagnosis of MF. TOX is suggested to be of higher diagnostic value in the early stages of MF than the conventionally used CD4 and other markers examined.