Present disclosure provide an encoding method and apparatus, which relate to the communications field and can perform proper quantization bit allocation for spectral coefficients of an audio signal, thereby improving quality of a signal obtained by a decoder by means of decoding. The method includes: after splitting spectral coefficients of a current data frame into subbands, acquiring quantized frequency envelope values of the subbands; modifying quantized frequency envelope values of subbands of a first quantity in the subbands; allocating quantization bits to the subbands according to modified quantized frequency envelope values of the subbands of the first quantity; quantizing a spectral coefficient of a subband to which a quantization bit is allocated in the subbands; and writing the quantized spectral coefficient of the subband to which a quantization bit is allocated into a bitstream.