diff --git a/doc/source/whatsnew/v1.5.0.rst b/doc/source/whatsnew/v1.5.0.rst
index 7aa1c1e84aa09..e38b12757e37e 100644
--- a/doc/source/whatsnew/v1.5.0.rst
+++ b/doc/source/whatsnew/v1.5.0.rst
@@ -278,6 +278,7 @@ Other enhancements
 - :meth:`DatetimeIndex.astype` now supports casting timezone-naive indexes to ``datetime64[s]``, ``datetime64[ms]``, and ``datetime64[us]``, and timezone-aware indexes to the corresponding ``datetime64[unit, tzname]`` dtypes (:issue:`47579`)
 - :class:`Series` reducers (e.g. ``min``, ``max``, ``sum``, ``mean``) will now successfully operate when the dtype is numeric and ``numeric_only=True`` is provided; previously this would raise a ``NotImplementedError`` (:issue:`47500`)
 - :meth:`RangeIndex.union` now can return a :class:`RangeIndex` instead of a :class:`Int64Index` if the resulting values are equally spaced (:issue:`47557`, :issue:`43885`)
+- :meth:`DataFrame.to_dict` now has a ``index`` parameter with default value True that can be set to False to exclude the index from the dictionary if orient is split or tight (:issue:`46398`)
 
 .. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 .. _whatsnew_150.notable_bug_fixes:
diff --git a/pandas/core/frame.py b/pandas/core/frame.py
index ead4ea744c647..c63636299be92 100644
--- a/pandas/core/frame.py
+++ b/pandas/core/frame.py
@@ -1811,7 +1811,7 @@ def to_numpy(
 
         return result
 
-    def to_dict(self, orient: str = "dict", into=dict):
+    def to_dict(self, orient: str = "dict", into=dict, index=True):
         """
         Convert the DataFrame to a dictionary.
 
@@ -1847,6 +1847,12 @@ def to_dict(self, orient: str = "dict", into=dict):
             instance of the mapping type you want.  If you want a
             collections.defaultdict, you must pass it initialized.
 
+        index : bool, default True
+            When set to False, method returns a dict without an index key
+            (and index_names if using orient='tight').
+
+            .. versionadded:: 1.5.0
+
         Returns
         -------
         dict, list or collections.abc.Mapping
@@ -1958,36 +1964,66 @@ def to_dict(self, orient: str = "dict", into=dict):
             )
 
         elif orient == "split":
-            return into_c(
-                (
-                    ("index", self.index.tolist()),
-                    ("columns", self.columns.tolist()),
+
+            if not index:
+                return into_c(
                     (
-                        "data",
-                        [
-                            list(map(maybe_box_native, t))
-                            for t in self.itertuples(index=False, name=None)
-                        ],
-                    ),
+                        ("columns", self.columns.tolist()),
+                        (
+                            "data",
+                            [
+                                list(map(maybe_box_native, t))
+                                for t in self.itertuples(index=False, name=None)
+                            ],
+                        ),
+                    )
+                )
+            else:
+                return into_c(
+                    (
+                        ("index", self.index.tolist()),
+                        ("columns", self.columns.tolist()),
+                        (
+                            "data",
+                            [
+                                list(map(maybe_box_native, t))
+                                for t in self.itertuples(index=False, name=None)
+                            ],
+                        ),
+                    )
                 )
-            )
 
         elif orient == "tight":
-            return into_c(
-                (
-                    ("index", self.index.tolist()),
-                    ("columns", self.columns.tolist()),
+            if not index:
+                return into_c(
+                    (
+                        ("columns", self.columns.tolist()),
+                        (
+                            "data",
+                            [
+                                list(map(maybe_box_native, t))
+                                for t in self.itertuples(index=False, name=None)
+                            ],
+                        ),
+                        ("column_names", list(self.columns.names)),
+                    )
+                )
+            else:
+                return into_c(
                     (
-                        "data",
-                        [
-                            list(map(maybe_box_native, t))
-                            for t in self.itertuples(index=False, name=None)
-                        ],
-                    ),
-                    ("index_names", list(self.index.names)),
-                    ("column_names", list(self.columns.names)),
+                        ("index", self.index.tolist()),
+                        ("columns", self.columns.tolist()),
+                        (
+                            "data",
+                            [
+                                list(map(maybe_box_native, t))
+                                for t in self.itertuples(index=False, name=None)
+                            ],
+                        ),
+                        ("index_names", list(self.index.names)),
+                        ("column_names", list(self.columns.names)),
+                    )
                 )
-            )
 
         elif orient == "series":
             return into_c((k, v) for k, v in self.items())
diff --git a/pandas/tests/frame/methods/test_to_dict.py b/pandas/tests/frame/methods/test_to_dict.py
index 6d5c32cae7368..b3a39c720fc4e 100644
--- a/pandas/tests/frame/methods/test_to_dict.py
+++ b/pandas/tests/frame/methods/test_to_dict.py
@@ -421,3 +421,24 @@ def test_to_dict_returns_native_types(self, orient, data, expected_types):
         for i, key, value in assertion_iterator:
             assert value == data[key][i]
             assert type(value) is expected_types[key][i]
+
+    def test_to_dict_index_orient_split(self):
+        # GH#46398
+        df = DataFrame({"A": [1, 2, 3], "B": [4, 5, 6]}, index=["row1", "row2", "row3"])
+        result = df.to_dict(orient="split", index=False)
+        expected = {
+            "columns": ["A", "B"],
+            "data": [[1, 4], [2, 5], [3, 6]],
+        }
+        tm.assert_dict_equal(result, expected)
+
+    def test_to_dict_index_orient_tight(self):
+        # GH#46398
+        df = DataFrame({"A": [1, 2, 3], "B": [4, 5, 6]}, index=["row1", "row2", "row3"])
+        result = df.to_dict(orient="tight", index=False)
+        expected = {
+            "columns": ["A", "B"],
+            "data": [[1, 4], [2, 5], [3, 6]],
+            "column_names": [None],
+        }
+        tm.assert_dict_equal(result, expected)