A network element health status detection method and device, where the method includes: determining sampled data of at least one key performance indicator (KPI) of a target network element in a first time window; obtaining a fluctuation score of any KPI in the at least one KPI according to sampled data of the any KPI in the first time window and a steady state value of the any KPI; and determining a health status of the target network element based on a fluctuation score of each KPI. Therefore, a network element health status is determined using single-point performance data of a network element and performance data in a network element time window.