A reference signal indication method and an apparatus are disclosed to indicate a to-be-reported reference signal in a random access process. The to-be-reported reference signal is a reference signal with a largest receive power. In the solutions disclosed in this application, the reference signal with the largest receive power may be reported. In this way, a network device can determine an optimal transmit beam, and can further determine an optimal receive beam, so that the optimal transmit beam and/or the optimal receive beam can be used to communicate with a terminal, to improve a beam gain of data transmission in the random access process.