The embodiment of the invention provides a flow control method and device. The flow control method comprises the steps of obtaining a message to be processed, determining the type of the message to beprocessed according to the type of resources required to be consumed by the message to be processed, and then determining a receiving channel corresponding to the message to be processed according tothe type of the message to be processed; and then judging whether the number of messages in the receiving channel is less than a first threshold or not, if so, putting the message to be processed into the receiving channel, otherwise, discarding the message to be processed. Different receiving channels are allocated in advance according to resources preferentially consumed by the messages to be processed, so that the corresponding receiving channel is controlled to perform flow limiting on the messages to be processed when the number of to-be-processed messages preferentially consuming a certain type of resources increases sharply, the messages to be processed are not enabled to use up a certain type of resources, other messages to be processed which do not preferentially consume the typeof resources can still use the type of resources, thereby enabling the system resources to be reasonably utilized, avoiding the system downtime caused by the sudden increase of the messages to be processed, and playing a role of protecting the system.