A method and apparatus for rate matching are disclosed by the invention, wherein the method includes: determining an initial value according to the total amount of data in the data stream and a predetermined initial offset value; performing an accumulation processing and an even distribution processing on said initial value and the amount of the data needing rate matching; determining the data needing rate matching from the data stream according to the processing result. With the solution proposed by the invention, a rate matching method using even distribution principle and accumulation principle can be determined. The method is simple, clear and accurate, and can be understood easily.