The present invention is applicable to the technical field of video monitoring. Provided are a method and an apparatus for recognizing a moving target. The method comprises: A: acquiring a video image with a background and a moving target; B: modeling a first video image to obtain a first background model; C: calculating a first differential image according to a second image and the first background model; D: modeling a second video image to obtain a second background model; E: calculating a second differential image according to a third image and the second background model; F: separately calculating a first binary image and a second binary image according to the first differential image and the second differential image; G: obtaining a variation region of the moving target according to the first binary image and the second binary image; and H: repeatedly performing steps A to G sequentially, and detecting variation regions of all moving targets. The present invention has good adaptability to a vehicle-mounted camera and has a high recognition rate of the moving target.