Embodiments of this application provide a resource allocation method and apparatus. The method includes: receiving resource allocation information, where the resource allocation information includes a first resource indicator value; and determining, based on the first resource indicator value, a first resource allocation scheme corresponding to the first resource indicator value, where the first resource allocation scheme belongs to L resource allocation schemes, the L resource allocation schemes include L1 resource allocation schemes, and a start location of a resource corresponding to each of the L1 resource allocation schemes is a resource unit other than an (S+1)th resource unit in Q consecutive resource units in a system bandwidth, where S is an integer multiple of X. Therefore, a waste of system resources can be reduced.