The Intel 80486 microprocessor (alias i486 or Intel486) was a higher performance follow up on the Intel 80386. Introduced in 1989, it was the first tightlypipelined x86 design as well as the first x86 chip to use more than a million transistors, due to a large on-chip cache and an integrated floating point unit. It represents a fourth generation of binary compatible CPUs since the original 8086 of 1978.

A 50 MHz 80486 executed around 40 million instructions per second on average and was able to reach 50 MIPS peak performance.

The i486 was without the usual 80-prefix because of a court ruling that prohibited trademarking numbers (such as 80486). Later, with the introduction of the Pentium brand, Intel began branding its chips with words rather than numbers.

The 80486 was announced at Spring Comdex in April 1989. At the announcement, Intel stated that samples would be available in the third quarter of 1989 and production quantities would ship in the fourth quarter of 1989. The first 80486-based PCs were announced in late 1989, but some advised that people wait until 1990 to purchase an 80486 PC because there were early reports of bugs and software incompatibilities.