公开密钥加密（英语：public-key cryptography，又译为公开密钥加密），也称为非对称加密（asymmetric cryptography），一种密码学算法类型，在这种密码学方法中，需要一对密钥，一个是私人密钥，另一个则是公开密钥。这两个密钥是数学相关，用某用户密钥加密后所得的信息，只能用该用户的解密密钥才能解密。如果知道了其中一个，并不能计算出另外一个。因此如果公开了一对密钥中的一个，并不会危害到另外一个的秘密性质。称公开的密钥为公钥；不公开的密钥为私钥。

该思想最早由瑞夫·墨克（Ralph C. Merkle）在1974年提出，之后在1976年。惠特菲尔德·迪菲（Whitfield Diffie）与马丁·赫尔曼（Martin Hellman）两位学者以单向函数与单向暗门函数为基础，为发讯与收讯的两方创建密钥。

Public-key cryptography, or asymmetric cryptography, is any cryptographic system that uses two kinds of keys: public keys that may be disseminated widely, while private keys are known only to the owner. In a public-key encryption system, any person can encrypt a message using the public key of the receiver, but such a message can be decrypted only with the receiver's private key. For this to work it must be computationally easy for a user to generate a public and private key-pair to be used for encryption and decryption. The strength of a public-key cryptography system relies on the degree of difficulty (computational impracticality) for a properly generated private key to be determined from its corresponding public key. Security then depends only on keeping the private key private, and the public key may be published without compromising security.