Exhaust gas cleaning catalyst

An exhaust gas cleaning catalyst disposed in an exhaust pathway of an internal combustion engine and cleaning exhaust gas emitted by the internal combustion engine, wherein

• the exhaust gas cleaning catalyst is provided with a substrate and a catalyst coat layer formed on a surface of the substrate,
• the catalyst coat layer is formed as a multilayer structure having an upper layer and a lower layer, with a layer nearer to the surface of the substrate being the lower layer and a layer further from the surface of the substrate being the upper layer,
• the upper layer is a Pd-free layer which does not contain Pd,
• the lower layer is a Pd-containing layer which contains Pd, and
• when a region of the lower layer that corresponds to 20% of the length of the exhaust gas cleaning catalyst from an exhaust gas inlet side end towards an exhaust gas outlet side of the exhaust gas cleaning catalyst is divided into four equal regions to be each 5% of the length, a relationship A>B>C is satisfied,
• where A represents the content of Pd in a first region that is a quarter at the most upstream side, B represents the content of Pd in a second region that is a quarter at the downstream side adjacent to the first region, and C represents the content of Pd in a third region that is a quarter at the downstream side adjacent to the second region.