The present invention provides a zoom lens and an image pickup apparatus including the zoom lens. The zoom lens includes a first lens group having negative refractive power and a second lens group having positive refractive power, each including at least one plastic aspherical lens. The zoom lens satisfies the following Conditional Expressions (1) and (2), 0.40 < fw/bkw <0.60, and 0.01 < |(X1-X0)/h0| < 0.02, where, fw: focal length of the entire zoom lens in focus at infinity in a wide-angle end state; bkw: back focus when the entire zoom lens is in focus at infinity in the wide-angle end state; X1: thickness at an image-side effective diameter position of the plastic aspherical lens of the first lens group; X0: thickness at the center of the plastic aspherical lens of the first lens group; and h0: image-side effective radius of the plastic aspherical lens of the first lens group.