A method for recognizing motion based on a motion sensor and a mobile terminal using the same are provided. The method includes determining an input type of the user's motion; compensating output data of the input user's motion using a compensated parameter value set corresponding to the determined input type of the user's motion; and recognizing the input user's motion by the compensated output data. The mobile terminal can uniformly recognize the user's motion regardless of the position of the mobile terminal in which a tapping motion is input and the direction in which a snapping motion is input, and thus the motion recognition rate of the mobile terminal is significantly improved.