The invention discloses an identity authentication method based on face features. The method comprises the steps: obtaining a to-be-detected image and a sample image for a target user, and enabling the to-be-detected image and the sample image to be face images of the target user; morphological characteristics of the to-be-detected image are extracted through morphological operation, and gradientcharacteristics of the to-be-detected image are extracted through a gradient algorithm; obtaining morphological characteristics of the sample image, and obtaining morphological characteristic similarity according to the morphological characteristics of the sample image and the morphological characteristics of the to-be-detected image; obtaining gradient features of the sample image, and obtaininggradient feature similarity according to the gradient features of the sample image and the gradient features of the to-be-detected image; and according to the morphological feature similarity and thegradient feature similarity, determining the image similarity of the to-be-detected image and the sample image, and when the image similarity is greater than or equal to a preset threshold, determining that the identity authentication of the target user is passed.