This application provides a collaborative node-based positioning method, a to-be-positioned node, and a collaborative node. The method includes: obtaining a collaborative positioning node list corresponding to each collaborative node that can directly communicate with the to-be-positioned node; selecting, according to the collaborative positioning node list corresponding to each collaborative node, a collaborative node corresponding to a collaborative positioning node list in which a quantity of collaborative nodes being the same as that in a target list corresponding to the to-be-positioned node is largest; and performing positioning on the to-be-positioned node by using an anchor node and each monitoring node, where the anchor node is the selected collaborative node, and each monitoring node is each of same collaborative nodes between the collaborative positioning node list corresponding to the anchor node and the target list.