<p>Error compensation is an economical and effective technique for achieving high machining accuracy. However, a new phenomenon has been detected in its application: error-compensation excited vibrations and further decreased surface quality in some cases. The mechanism of this phenomenon is important but remains unclear, and its main influencing factor remains an open question. To reveal this mechanism, a stability and surface quality analysis model of the dynamic milling process that considers the influence of error compensation is proposed for the first time. Error compensation can be considered as a quasi-static, periodic forcing term added to the milling system. The quasi-static part changes the cutting width, whereas the periodic forcing part mainly influences the instantaneous undeformed chip thickness, based on which the milling stability and surface location error are derived. Numerical simulations and milling experiments were conducted to validate the proposed model. The experimental results show that error compensation has little influence on milling stability but may decrease the surface quality when the compensation values between compensation cycles change significantly. The proposed method shows great potential for estimating and optimizing error compensation paths and improving the quality of machined surfaces.</p>