This application discloses an application instance address translation method, including: sending, by a control plane device, a collaboration request to a mobile edge cloud MEC control device, where the collaboration request includes location information of a terminal and information about an application service; receiving, by the control plane device, response information from the MEC control device, where the response information includes an address of a target instance; and sending, by the control plane device based on the address of the target instance, the address of the target instance to a first user plane device corresponding to the target instance, and instructing the first user plane device to set, as the address of the target instance, a forwarding address of an uplink packet sent by the terminal to obtain the application service.