The invention discloses a people counting method and device based on head shoulder detection. The people counting method based on head shoulder detection comprises steps of S1 arranging a heat area and a base line in a monitor video, S2,performing head-shoulder detection on the heat area in the image frame of the monitor video, S3,determining whether the head and the shoulder exist according to the head shoulder detection result, if yes, executing the step S4, S4 setting a head-shoulder frame and maintaining or updating a tracking list and continuing to execute the step 6, S6, performing tracking on each head-shoulder frame in the tracking list to obtain a group of tracking frames, S7, determining whether the tracked head-shoulder frame in the current frame satisfies a people counting trigger condition, S8, starting up a counter and performing people counting according to the tracked head-shoulder frame. The invention discloses a people counting device based on the head-shoulder detection. The people counting method based on the head-shoulder detection is wide in application range, high in detection, low in false detection rate and high in tracking performance.