In computer science, a memory leak is a type of resource leak that occurs when a computer program incorrectly manages memory allocations in a way that memory which is no longer needed is not released. A memory leak may also happen when an object is stored in memory but cannot be accessed by the running code. A memory leak has symptoms similar to a number of other problems and generally can only be diagnosed by a programmer with access to the program's source code.

Computer memory stores information, such as data and programs, for immediate use in the computer. The term memory is often synonymous with the terms RAM, main memory or primary storage. Archaic synonyms for main memory include core and store.