The present application provides a method and device for random access. The method includes: receiving, via a terminal device, N groups of random access-related information sent by a network device, wherein the N groups of random access-related information are determined by the network device according to a network deployment and optimization policy, and the ith group of random access-related information is used by the terminal device for determining a random access preamble set i and a time-frequency resource corresponding to the random access preamble set i, N being a positive integer greater than or equal to 1, i=1, . . . N; and sending, via the terminal device, a random access preamble to the network device according to the N groups of random access-related information.