The invention discloses a method and device for obtaining paging number, relates to the technical field of communication and aims at solving the problem that in the prior art, the user distribution condition of other operators cannot be effectively obtained. The method comprises the steps that user equipment obtains duration T of a page discontinuous reception cycle and the number nB of paging occasions in the T according to a system message sent by a base station; a target paging frame and a target paging occasion are determined according to an IMSI (International Mobile Subscriber Identification Number) corresponding to a user, the T and the nB; a physical downlink control channel PDCCH message is analyzed at the target paging occasion of the target paging frame; when a paging radio network temporary identity is contained in the PDCCH message, a physical downlink shared channel message PDSCH is analyzed to obtain the number of paging messages corresponding to the target paging occasion; and the total number of the paging messages in the T is determined according to the number of the paging messages corresponding to the target paging occasion and the nB. The method and the device are applied to a process of obtaining the user distribution condition.