The non-symmetrized hyperspherical harmonics method for a three-body system, composed by two particles having equal masses, but different from the mass of the third particle, is reviewed and applied to the 3 H, 3 He nuclei and 3 Λ H hyper-nucleus, seen respectively as nnp, ppn and N N Λ three-body systems. The convergence of the method is first tested in order to estimate its accuracy. Then, the difference of binding energy between 3 H and 3 He due to the difference of the proton and the neutron masses is studied using several central spin-independent and spin-dependent potentials. Finally, the 3 Λ H hypernucleus binding energy is calculated using different N N and ΛN potential models. The results have been compared with those present in the literature, finding a very nice agreement.