The embodiment of the invention discloses an application starting method and device, and the method comprises the steps: monitoring an application starting command, and intercepting the application starting command; a terminal device of the application being an IOS terminal device; performing hierarchical service extraction according to the application startup command to obtain a plurality of services associated with application startup, and querying startup time levels of the plurality of services associated with the application startup; determining the starting time level of the service according to the dependency relationship between the service and the application framework and / or the to-be-loaded service in the application starting process; and according to the starting time level of each service, embedding the services into starting process management and control in sequence, so that each service is started, and starting of the application is completed. The problems that multiple services are started at the same time, too many resources are occupied, the starting efficiency is influenced, and due to the fact that the service with the low starting time level is not started successfully, the service with the low starting time level fails to start, and the starting time is too long, application downtime is caused are solved.