The invention provides a people counting method based on monocular vision. The method comprises: obtaining pixel points of a head area through a head partition method which is based on hair color characteristics, and calculating head compactness with a plurality of round templates. The method can effectively extract the head area and count the number of people. Thus, accurate rate of pedestrian quantity statistics under monocular vision can be effectively increased, accuracy of pedestrian target tracking is improved, and a problem of people counting with a plurality of pedestrian targets in a complex scene is solved.