The present invention provides a method and device for locating a cell of low resident ratio, and relates to the field of mobile communication, and the method and device can be used to improve the identification accuracy of the cell of low resident ratio. The method comprises that work log information of a target cell within historic time of preset length is obtained; a residence effective factor of subscribers in the target cell is determined according to the log information; a coverage parameter of the target cell is determined according to the log information; the resident rate of the target cell is determined according to the residence effective factor and the coverage parameter; and when the resident rate is lower than a preset threshold, the target cell is determined to be the cell of low resident ratio. The method and device are used to locate the cell of the low resident ratio.