To provide a method for determining a component pickup order used by a component mounting apparatus which has plural mounting heads, and which causes the mounting heads to alternately pick up components from a component supplying unit and mount the components onto boards. The component pickup order determining method includes pickup order determining steps (S2 and S4) of determining an order according to which the plural mounting heads pick up components from the component supplying unit, so that some of the components corresponding to two or more tasks do not remain in any one of restricted areas where one of the mounting heads cannot pick up any components, when the component supplying unit includes the restricted areas and a task is referred to as at least one of components which is mounted in one of repeatedly executed operation sequences each of which includes suctioning, moving and mounting of the components executed by the mounting heads.