Disclosed are a data transmission method and apparatus. The method includes: a transmission node acquiring information about a data transmission mode, herein the information about the data transmission mode includes a rapid data transmission mode in which a time-domain length of data transmission is configured based on a time-domain symbol; and the transmission node transmitting data according to the acquired data transmission mode. In the data transmission method, the time-domain length of data transmission is configured based on the time-domain symbol, the setting of the time-domain length of data transmission is flexible, multiple opportunities of data transmission can exist in one subframe, resources used for data transmission can be guaranteed to be found rapidly when there is a data transmission demand, thus rapid data transmission is realized and data transmission delay is reduced.