The present invention provides a resource allocation method and device. The method includes: sending, by a base station, a resource allocation parameter to a terminal, where the resource allocation parameter includes a starting narrowband index and a resource position, where the starting narrowband index is used for indicating a narrowband resource and/or a wideband resource for the terminal to establish a physical shared channel. The embodiments of the present invention solve the problem in existing art that resource allocation for physical downlink shared channel (PDSCH)/physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) only considers a bandwidth limitation of a 1.4 MHz narrowband so that a user equipment (UE) cannot support machine type communications (MTC) applications with a higher data rate, achieving an effect of being capable of supporting MTC traffic with a higher data rate.