The invention proposes a road up-down relationship identification method and apparatus. The road up-down relationship identification method comprises the steps of obtaining a group of to-be-matched road chains, wherein each road chain consists of one or more road segments; performing matching on the to-be-matched road chains in pairs according to data of the road chains, and calculating a score of degree of matching between the two road chains; and identifying an up-down relationship of a road according to the score of the degree of matching. According to the method, the up-down relationship of the road can be identified, thereby facilitating subsequent processing.