An obstacle detection method and apparatus are provided. The obstacle detection method provided includes: obtaining a to-be-detected image; determining a road surface area and a non-road surface area in the to-be-detected image according to pixel information contained in the to-be-detected image; respectively determining an outermost layer contour line of the road surface area and a contour line of the non-road surface area; and when the contour line of at least one non-road surface area is located in the area contained in the outermost layer contour line of the road surface area, determining a physical object contained in the at least one non-road surface area as an obstacle. The present application is applied to a process of detecting an obstacle.