To provide a method for inspecting electronic substrates and an apparatus using the method whereby all of minute parts arranged on the electronic substrates can be highly accurately extracted without being influenced by a strain amount of the electronic substrates.

This method for inspecting electronic substrates includes a process of measuring a three-dimensional shape of the electronic substrate to be inspected to obtain surface shape measurement data, a process of automatically estimating the strain amount of the electronic substrate from the surface shape measurement data of the whole face of the measured electronic substrate, a process of automatically generating an approximate surface of the electronic substrate from the estimated result of the above process, and a subtraction process between the approximate surface generated in the above process and the surface shape measurement data. The electronic substrate-inspecting apparatus is provided with a processing unit for executing each of the processes.