A distributed packet processing apparatus capable of distributing packet load across a plurality of packet processing engines is provided. The distributed packet processing apparatus includes a plurality of processing engines each configured to process allocated packets, a first tag generating unit configured to allocate an input packet to a processing engine, which has a processing engine index corresponding to a tag index for the input packet, among the plurality of processing engines, a second tag generating unit configured to calculate a tag index for an output packet, and an index conversion unit configure to convert the tag index for the output packet to one processing engine index among a plurality of processing indexes for the plurality of the processing engines and allocates the output packet to a processing engine having the one processing engine index such that loads are distributed among the plurality of processing engines.