Narrow sense of non-ferrous metals, also known as non-ferrous metals, is a general term for all metals other than iron, manganese, and chromium. Non-ferrous metals in a broad sense also include non-ferrous alloys.

Non-ferrous alloys are alloys composed of a non-ferrous metal as the matrix (usually more than 50%) and adding one or several other elements. Non-ferrous metals generally refer to all metals except iron (and sometimes manganese and chromium) and iron-based alloys. Non-ferrous metals can be divided into heavy metals (such as copper, lead, zinc), light metals (such as aluminum, magnesium), precious metals (such as gold, silver, platinum) and rare metals (such as tungsten, molybdenum, germanium, lithium, lanthanum, uranium).