The competition among interest groups continuously drives land use transformation in resource-based cities, which in turn significantly impacts their sustainable development. Land use conflicts highlight the contradictions in the value orientations of interest groups associated with different land use types. During the process of land use transformation, conflicts serve as a sensitive indicator of the transformation process. To further explore the specific role of conflicts in land use transformation and investigate whether this role differs across different resource-based cities, this study examines three types of resource-based cities in Heilongjiang Province, China. Based on data from 2000, 2010, and 2020, the study measures land use conflicts and constructs a land use transition matrix. The geographical detector model is employed to assess the driving forces of conflicts on land use transformation and the interactions between conflicts and other driving factors. The results show that: (1) The land use conflict states in the three types of cities over the 20-year period are: continuous intensification in the first type, a sharp increase followed by stabilization in the second type, and consistently low conflict levels in the third type; (2) The driving force of land use conflicts in land transformation is strongest in the third type of city, followed by the second type and the first type, with the intensity of conflicts negatively correlated with the level of economic development; (3) The interactive driving effect of conflicts is significantly stronger than that of any single driving factor.