The free vibration characteristics of a ring-stiffened cylindrical shell-plate coupled structure is investigated. An analysis model for vibration of the coupled structure with arbitrary boundary conditions is constructed. The stiffeners are treated as discrete elements on the shell. Inside the shell, the transverse and in-plane vibration of rectangular plate with cutout is considered. Arbitrary boundary conditions of both the shell and plate are achieved by different combinations of elastic constraints. Four types of coupling springs are introduced to describe the corresponding couplings between forces and moments at the plate-shell junction. Displacements of plate and shell are separately expanded into two-dimensional Chebyshev polynomials series. With the aid of the Ritz method, a system of homogeneous equations governing the eigenvalue problem is obtained. This system allows to obtain the natural frequencies and modes of the coupled structure. The influences of boundary conditions and coupling conditions on the free vibration characteristics are studied. It is found that the present formulation shows the ability of affording accurate and efficient results.