Provided are an apparatus and method for executing an application. Using the apparatus and method, an application is executed in a terminal directly, or by receiving a computing service from a remote server. After an execution time and/or power consumption of when the application is executed in the terminal directly, and an execution time and/or power consumption when the computing service is received from the remote server are estimated, one of the application execution methods of the two cases may be selected according to the estimated values. The estimated values may be determined based on a state of the terminal, the quality of service (QoS) state of the remote server, and a characteristic of the application.