It is time-memory consuming when numerically solving time fractional partial differential equations, as it requires O ( N 2 ) computational cost and O ( M N ) memory complexity with finite difference methods, where, N and M are the total number of time steps and spatial grid points, respectively. To surmount this issue, we develop an efficient hybrid method with O ( N ) computational cost and O ( M ) memory complexity in solving two-dimensional time fractional diffusion equation. The presented method is based on the Laplace transform method and a finite difference scheme. The stability and convergence of the proposed method are analyzed rigorously by the means of the Fourier method. A comparative study drawn from numerical experiments shows that the hybrid method is accurate and reduces the computational cost, memory requirement as well as the CPU time effectively compared to a standard finite difference scheme.