To provide a steel ball which realizes the excellent resistances to foreign matter and indentation and reduces bearing assembly flaw and handling scratch without carrying out special surface treatment as a steel ball for a rolling bearing.

The steel ball for the rolling bearing is processed by peening and grinding or grinding and peening processes and is finally subjected to lapping treatment after cutting a SUJ2 coil-shaped wire into a predetermined length and then applying cold forging, deburring, immersion quenching and tempering. Vickers hardness of the steel ball surface is measured by load under which the depth of Vickers flaw is 5 μm or less. The measured value is 870 HV or more in a value obtained by a plane conversion. Hardness from the surface to 5% of a steel ball diameter is more than 830 HV. Compressive residual stress of the steel ball surface after lapping is 900 MPa or more.