A method and apparatus for detecting text are provided. The method includes: extracting features of a to-be-detected image; predicting using a character detection network a probability of each pixel point in the to-be-detected image being a character pixel point, and position information of each pixel point relative to a bounding box of a character including the pixel point when the pixel point is the character pixel point; determining position information of bounding boxes of candidate characters based on the prediction result of the character detection network; inputting the extracted features into a character map network, converting a feature map outputted by the character map network, and generating character vectors; determining a neighboring candidate character of each candidate character, and connecting each candidate character with an associated neighboring candidate character to form a character set; and determining a character area of the to-be-detected image.