Embodiments of the present invention provide a pilot sending method and an apparatus, which relate to the communication field and can save network resources. The solution is: performing spreading on at least two signature sequences by using a spreading code, where each signature sequence of the at least two signature sequences corresponds to at least one user equipment (UE), and is used as a dedicated pilot of at least one data stream of the at least one UE, and the dedicated pilot is used by the UE to perform precoding matrix estimation; and performing precoding on the spread signature sequences, and sending the precoded spread signature sequences to the UE. The embodiments of the present invention are applicable to the sending of pilots in MU-MIMO.