A surface-treated steel sheet for a battery container, including a steel sheet, an iron-nickel diffusion layer formed on the steel sheet, and a nickel layer formed on the iron-nickel diffusion layer (and constituting the outermost layer, wherein when the Fe intensity and the Ni intensity are continuously measured from the surface of the surface-treated steel sheet for a battery container along the depth direction with a high frequency glow discharge optical emission spectrometric analyzer, the thickness of the iron-nickel diffusion layer being the difference between the depth at which the Fe intensity exhibits a first predetermined value and the depth at which the Ni intensity exhibits a second predetermined value is 0.04 to 0.31 μm; and the total amount of the nickel contained in the iron-nickel diffusion layer and the nickel contained in the nickel layer is 4.4 g/m2 or more and less than 10.8 g/m2.