The present invention provides a memory cleanup method and apparatus, and a terminal. The method comprises: obtaining a value of an initial virtual memory occupied by a running program during startup; when a memory cleanup instruction is generated, obtaining a value of a current virtual memory occupied by a current background running program; according to the value of the current virtual memory and the value of the initial virtual memory, obtaining a running virtual memory value; and if the running virtual memory value is greater than a preset threshold, closing the current background running program corresponding to the running virtual memory value. According to the scheme provided by the present invention, the value of the initial virtual memory occupied by the running program during the startup is obtained, and the value of the current virtual memory occupied by the current background running program is obtained before memory cleanup, to obtain the running virtual memory value; then, the background running program corresponding to the running virtual memory value that exceeds the preset threshold is turned off, so as to completely release the memory, thereby saving the need of restarting a smart device and saving cleanup time without affecting use by a user.