The present invention discloses a tag identification method and apparatus, relates to the field of communications network technologies, which can implement that there are few steps of determining a format of a tag by a device host in an NFC terminal, so that the tag can be quickly processed. In the embodiments of the present invention, a Near Field Communication NFC controller reads a type of a tag; the NFC controller determines whether a format of the tag is an NFC data exchange format NDEF according to the type of the tag; and the NFC controller sends a notification message to a device host when the NFC controller determines that the format of the tag is the NDEF, where the notification message includes that the format of the tag is the NDEF. The solutions provided in the embodiments of the present invention are applicable to identifying a tag.