A magnetic powder according to the present invention comprises powder made of the iron element as a main component, and an insulator covering the surface of the powder. The powder has a spherical shape or a smoothed surface. The insulator comprises rare earth fluorides, alkaline metal fluorides, or alkaline earth metal fluorides. A soft magnetic composite formed by using this magnetic powder can suppress its eddy current loss in a wide frequency band and can also suppress its hysteresis loss due to compressed residual distortion in soft magnetic powder.