A method and an apparatus relate to the communications field, used for determining a target cell, where the method includes obtaining, by a terminal, a historical camped-on cell list of the terminal and a neighboring cell list of a serving cell of the terminal, determining, by the terminal, that a first cell list is the neighboring cell list of the serving cell and the historical camped-on cell list when a signal strength of the serving cell of the terminal is less than or equal to a first preset value, performing, by the terminal, measurement for a cell in the first cell list to obtain a measurement result, and determining, by the terminal, a target cell from the first cell list according to the measurement result.