A communication method and apparatus are provided. The method may be applied to a terminal and a network device. In the method, the network device first sends first indication information before sending a paging message, where the first indication information is used to indicate whether at least two terminals in an RRC_IDLE state or an RRC_INACTIVE state need to receive the paging message. In this way, after each of the at least two terminals receives the first indication information, the terminal may determine, based on the first indication information, whether the terminal needs to receive the paging message. If determining that the terminal needs to receive the paging message, the terminal may detect and receive the paging message on a corresponding time-frequency resource after the network device sends the paging message.