Embodiments of the present disclosure provide a method and apparatus for detecting a license plate. The method comprises: obtaining, according to pixel values of pixels in an image to be detected, a candidate license plate area M1 in the image to be detected (S101); calculating an aspect ratio of the candidate license plate area M1 and determining if the aspect ratio is greater than a first predefined threshold (S102); determining, if the aspect ratio is greater than the first predefined threshold, a new candidate license plate area M2 from the candidate license plate area M1 according to a predefined machine learning-based regression algorithm (S103); determining, according to a first predefined classification model, whether the candidate license plate area M2 is a license plate area (S104); determining, if the candidate license plate area M2 is a license plate area, the candidate license plate area M2 as a license plate area, and generating a detection result based on the candidate license plate area M2 (S105). The application of the solution improves the accuracy of license plate detection.