The present invention relates to a random access processing method and apparatus. The method includes: monitoring, on at least one carrier in a pre-configured first carrier group, whether a time-frequency resource for transmitting a physical random access channel (PRACH) is idle, wherein the first carrier group comprises at least two carriers; and when there is an idle time-frequency resource for the PRACH, sending a random access preamble on the idle time-frequency resource for the PRACH to request random access.