The present invention provides a method and an apparatus for allocating control channel candidates, which relate to the communications field, and can allocate control channel candidates at different aggregation levels to K ePDCCH sets and reduce complexity of blind detection performed by a UE. The method includes: determining K sets for transmitting a control channel, where each set in the K sets includes at least one physical resource block pair; and allocating control channel candidates at each aggregation level to at least one set in the K sets according to at least one of aggregation levels supported by the control channel to be transmitted, the number of control channel candidates corresponding to each aggregation level, the K sets for transmitting the control channel, and types of the sets.