The present disclosure provides a method, an apparatus and a terminal device for communication protocol compatibility. The method includes: receiving an external protocol list transmitted by an external device and retrieving a locally stored local protocol list; taking one of a same version information of the external protocol list and the local protocol list as matched version information, if the external protocol list and the local protocol list have the same version information; and taking the local protocol corresponding to the snatched version information as the protocol for communicating with the external device, and transmitting the matched version information to the external device. As a result, when the terminal device and the external device have the same communication protocol, they can perform data exchange using the same communication protocol automatically, which reduces the possibility of the incompatibility in the communication protocol so as to improve the communication success rate.