The purpose of this paper is to investigate the definition of complexity for static anisotropic cylindrical objects in the background of f (G, T ) gravity, where G and T stand for Gauss–Bonnet term and trace of the energy–momentum tensor, respectively. We develop the modified field equations, Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff equation, mass distribution and structure scalars. The complexity is calculated from the splitting of the Riemann tensor in terms of a complexity factor which is associated with the physical characteristics (anisotropic pressure,inhomogeneous energy density) of the system. The zero complexity condition is derived as a constraint to estimate the behaviour of two compact objects corresponding to Gokhroo and Mehra ansatz and polytropic equation of state.We conclude that the addition of f (G, T ) terms contribute to the increment in the complexity of the system.