The invention provides an active power distribution network multi-terminal fault identification method and system based on transient signals. The method comprises the following steps: firstly, transient voltage being adopted to construct a protection starting criterion; comparing the integral average value of the zero-mode voltage in the protection time window with a zero-mode setting threshold value, judging whether a grounding fault occurs or not, comparing the integral average value of the transient voltage of each phase after the zero-mode component is filtered out in the protection time window with a set threshold value, and identifying a fault phase; then, according to the fault phase and the fault type, selecting a corresponding transient signal to perform windowed Fourier transform, extracting the voltage and current of a corresponding characteristic frequency band, calculating the transient impedance under the required characteristic frequency band, and judging the fault direction by comparing the root-mean-square value of the transient impedance with the protection setting impedance value; and finally, the fault position being judged through the multi-terminal fault direction information. The method disclosed by the invention is basically not influenced by factors such as transition resistance, DG permeability, network operation state and the like, has relatively lowrequirements on communication conditions, and can realize fault identification and comprehensive protection of the active power distribution network.