A method and a device for determining multi-user transmission mode are provided. The method includes: grouping terminals based on channel spatial characteristics of the terminals; allocating data transmission modes to the terminals, where data transmission of the terminals in different groups is performed on an identical scheduling time-frequency resource and in a Multi-User Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MU-MIMO) mode, and data transmission of the terminals in an identical group is performed on the scheduling time-frequency resource and in a non-orthogonal multiple access mode.