Inter-plant heat integration is an effective way for energy recovery in process industry. Although inter-plant heat integration can significantly reduce energy consumption, it is not widely applied in the multiple stakeholders' situation due to profit or cost distribution problems. Therefore, this work considers both the technique aspects of heat integration and its business aspects between stakeholders simultaneously. The new proposed methodology consists of three steps. Firstly the optimal matching of heat integration between plants is obtained through mathematical programming. Then the cost distribution is decided through game theory. Finally the cost distribution obtained previous is corrected by an ideal expert model. A case study is used to illustrate the effectiveness of the method in the end of the work. (C) 2020 The Chemical Industry and Engineering Society of China, and Chemical Industry Press Co., Ltd. All rights reserved.