Fingerprint unlocking method and terminal

The embodiment of the invention provides a fingerprint unlocking method. The method comprises the following steps: acquiring fingerprint information; determining the target group number of a group of fingerprints with the highest similarity in preset fingerprint matching data to the fingerprint information, wherein the prestored fingerprint matching data comprises N groups of fingerprints, each group of fingerprints comprises a plurality of fingerprint templates, each group in the N groups of fingerprints corresponds to a group number of a unique identifier, and N is an integer greater than 1; matching the fingerprint information with the fingerprint templates in the fingerprints which correspond to the target group number; unlocking the terminal when a target matching value is matched, wherein the target matching value is a matching value which corresponds to the fingerprint templates in the fingerprints corresponding to the target group number and of which the matching value with the fingerprint information is greater than a first preset threshold value. The embodiment of the invention also provides a terminal. According to the embodiment of the invention, the fingerprint unlocking efficiency can be improved.