Disclosed is an apparatus for hand gesture recognition based on a depth image, which includes a depth image acquiring unit configured to acquire a depth image including a hand region, a depth point classifying unit configured to classify depth points of a hand region in the depth image according to a corresponding hand portion by means of a machine studying method, and a hand model matching unit configured to match a three-dimensional hand model with the classified depth points by using distances between the classified depth points and a hand portion respectively corresponding to the depth points. A recognition method using the apparatus is also disclosed.