The present invention discloses a data processing method and apparatus, and relates to the field of communications technologies. The method includes: obtaining information about a header field of a data packet; searching, by using the information, an exact match flow table for an exact match entry that matches the data packet; when the exact match entry that matches the data packet is found, determining whether an update time of a wildcard entry corresponding to the exact match entry is before a creation time of the exact match entry, where an exact flow in the exact match entry is a subset of a rule in the wildcard entry corresponding to the exact match entry; and when the update time of the wildcard entry corresponding to the exact match entry is before the creation time of the exact match entry, processing the data packet according to an action instruction corresponding to the exact match entry; or when the update time of the wildcard entry corresponding to the exact match entry is not before the creation time of the exact match entry, deleting the exact match entry. In the present invention, flow table updating and flow entry searching may be performed simultaneously. Therefore, there is no delay in data packet processing, and network performance is improved.