Embodiments of the present invention disclose an acknowledgement indication method for data transmission and a related device. The method includes: detecting, by a base station, whether each user equipment (UE) in an acknowledgement group transmits data, to obtain a detection result; generating, by the base station, an acknowledgement indication message according to the detection result, where the acknowledgement indication message indicates a flag bit status corresponding to each UE in the acknowledgement group, the flag bit status includes a first state or a second state, the first state indicates that the base station finds data, and the second state indicates that the base station does not find data; and sending, by the base station, the acknowledgement indication message.