The invention discloses a license plate detection method based on a convolutional neural network. The method specifically includes the steps that an Adaboost license plate detector based on Haar characteristics detects license plate images to be detected, license plate roughing regions are acquired, a convolutional neural network complete license plate recognition model recognizes the license plate roughing regions, a final license plate candidate region is acquired, the final license plate candidate region is segmented through a multi-threshold segmentation algorithm, license plate Chinese characters, letters and numbers are acquired, a Chinese character, letter and number convolutional neural network recognition model recognizes the license plate Chinese characters, letters and numbers, and then a license plate recognition result is acquired. License plate images under different conditions can be accurately recognized through the Adaboost license plate detector based on the Haar characteristics and the convolutional neural network complete license plate recognition model, meanwhile, characters are segmented through the multi-threshold segmentation algorithm, character images can be more easily and conveniently segmented, and the good effect is achieved in engineering application.