Is there a legal limit on late fees in Arkansas?

No statutory cap (see reasonableness standard and notes). Arkansas law sets no cap, no grace period, and no reasonableness standard for late fees anywhere. The only backstop is general contract and liquidated-damages doctrine, under which a charge grossly disproportionate to actual damage risks being unenforceable as a penalty, and no Arkansas statute codifies that rule for residential leases.

Can a landlord charge a daily late fee in Arkansas?

No Arkansas statute addresses daily late fees. Agreed late charges, including recurring ones, are collectible as rent, and the only brake is the common-law rule against penalty clauses.

What late fees can a landlord charge in Arkansas?

Verified October 2, 2026 1 statement held All Arkansas topics →

What did not become law. None of the following is law; failed bills are sometimes still described as if enacted:

SB 501 (2025 RS) — 'Tenant Possessions Recovery Act' — Would have required a landlord to give a tenant at least 14 days' written notice before the scheduled repossession date after a court issues a writ of possession, and created a process for tenants to recover personal possessions left behind. Adjacent to, rather than within, the deposit, rent-increase, late-fee, entry and eviction topics covered here, but it was the session's principal tenant-side bill. Status: Dead. Filed 2025-03-18, amended and re-referred to Senate Judiciary 2025-03-20, died in committee at the 2025-05-05 sine die adjournment. The 2026 fiscal session passed no landlord-tenant legislation; watch for a refile in the 2027 regular session (Arkansas holds regular sessions in odd years). (checked July 10, 2026).

Arkansas sets no cap on residential late fees and mandates no grace period — the fee is whatever the lease provides, policed only by the general contract-law rule against penalty clauses.

Cited to A.C.A. § 18-17-401 (rent payable without demand or notice at the time and place agreed) (b)(1) and 2 more cited sources · Verified October 2, 2026, 1 statement held at an earlier date

The state's landlord-tenant statutes treat late charges simply as rent: the 2007 act defines rent to include 'late charges whether payable in lump sum or periodic payments,' and rent is payable without demand or notice at the time and place the parties agreed. Two five-day rules are routinely misread as a grace period, and both are eviction rules instead: if rent goes unpaid for five days past the due date the landlord may terminate the rental agreement, and unpaid rent five days past due automatically constitutes legal notice that eviction proceedings may begin. Neither says anything about when a late fee may accrue. Arkansas also has a criminal footnote: a tenant who fails to pay rent and then refuses to vacate after ten days' written notice commits a misdemeanor under the failure-to-vacate statute — an eviction oddity, not a fee rule.

Arkansas late fees at a glance

Statutory cap	No statutory cap (see reasonableness standard and notes)
Mandatory grace period	None mandated statewide
Must be in the lease	Not addressed by statute
Daily fees	No Arkansas statute addresses daily late fees. Agreed late charges, including recurring ones, are collectible as rent, and the only brake is the common-law rule against penalty clauses. The 2007 act's definition of 'rent' expressly includes 'late charges whether payable in lump sum or periodic payments' (A.C.A. 18-17-301(10)).
Reasonableness standard	Arkansas law sets no cap, no grace period, and no reasonableness standard for late fees anywhere. The only backstop is general contract and liquidated-damages doctrine, under which a charge grossly disproportionate to actual damage risks being unenforceable as a penalty, and no Arkansas statute codifies that rule for residential leases.

Cite this page: "Landlord Atlas, Arkansas Late Fee Laws (verified October 2, 2026; held statements carry their own dates), landlordatlas.com/laws/late-fees/arkansas/" — free to cite and quote with a link (how these records are verified). Everything above is cited in the citations section below.

Check a late fee against the Arkansas rules — free, no signup, built on the same verified Arkansas law as this page.

Notes and caveats

The five-day rules are eviction rules, not a grace period — The 18-17-701(b) five-day termination right and the 18-17-901(b) five-day automatic eviction notice are eviction-side rules; neither says anything about when a late fee may accrue.
Unpaid late fees are rent — The 2007 act's definition folds 'late charges whether payable in lump sum or periodic payments' into rent (18-17-301(10)), so nonpayment of an agreed late fee can itself ground termination.
There is no cap and no grace period anywhere — No cap or grace-period provision exists anywhere in chapters 18-16 or 18-17. Chapter 18-17 contains none across its whole span, 18-17-101 through 18-17-913, and the deposit subchapter says nothing about fees. The only backstop is the general contract-law rule against penalty clauses, which no Arkansas statute codifies for residential leases.
Why 'must be in lease' is also not addressed by statute — No statute conditions late fees on a lease clause, so asserting a statutory element would overstate the law — though as contract law a fee needs an agreed basis: rent is due 'without demand or notice' only 'at the time and place agreed upon by the parties' (18-17-401(b)(1)).
The criminal footnote — The 18-16-101 failure-to-vacate misdemeanor (10 days' written notice, $1-$25-per-day fine) is criminal-eviction context only — not a fee rule.

Common questions: Arkansas late fees

Each answer is the verified value from the table above, restated as a direct answer. Free to quote with a link to this page.

Is there a legal limit on late fees in Arkansas?: No statutory cap (see reasonableness standard and notes). Arkansas law sets no cap, no grace period, and no reasonableness standard for late fees anywhere. The only backstop is general contract and liquidated-damages doctrine, under which a charge grossly disproportionate to actual damage risks being unenforceable as a penalty, and no Arkansas statute codifies that rule for residential leases.
Is there a grace period before rent is late in Arkansas?: None mandated statewide.
Does a late fee have to be written into the lease in Arkansas?: Not addressed by statute.
Can a landlord charge a daily late fee in Arkansas?: No Arkansas statute addresses daily late fees. Agreed late charges, including recurring ones, are collectible as rent, and the only brake is the common-law rule against penalty clauses.

Statements held at an earlier date

Arkansas publishes its code only on a site whose terms do not allow automated reading, so this page is verified on the acts the legislature publishes and on court and agency sources. The statement below rests on text only the code prints. It keeps the date it was last verified; every other statement on this page was confirmed on October 2, 2026 ( how held statements work).

Outside chapter 17, no Arkansas statute sets a late-fee cap, grace period, lease-clause condition or daily-fee rule; a rent-increase notice or limit, or state rent control; an entry notice period, time-of-day limit, emergency-entry rule or remedy for abusive entry; a civil notice-to-quit that displaces § 18-17-704; a rule on a peaceable lockout or a utility shutoff; or a general bar on retaliation. Ark. Code Title 18, chapter 16 (the list of sections) · last verified July 10, 2026

Citations

A.C.A. § 18-17-401 (rent payable without demand or notice at the time and place agreed) · (b)(1) (verified 2026) Official source
A.C.A. § 18-17-301 (definitions — 'rent' includes late charges, confirming fees are lease terms) · (10) (verified 2026) Official source
A.C.A. § 18-17-701 (5-day nonpayment TERMINATION right — an eviction rule commonly misread as a late-fee grace period) · (b) (verified 2026) Official source

How this record was verified: Arkansas's official code is published via a LexisNexis portal without stable deep links (GA/TN-class sourcing), so verification pairs two independent current-code mirrors with official arkleg.state.ar.us session-law PDFs: every section that carries an answer here (A.C.A. 18-16-303, 18-16-304, 18-16-305, 18-16-306, 18-17-201, 18-17-202, 18-17-401, 18-17-602, 18-17-704, 18-17-705, 14-16-601) was read verbatim on FindLaw (current through 2024-03-28) and independently re-read on the Justia 2024 Arkansas Code edition , with all reads matching; chapter 18-17 was additionally read in FULL from a mirrored chapter PDF for negative checks (no late-fee, rent-increase, or entry-notice provision exists). Every amendment was traced to the official act text read from arkleg PDFs: Act 559 of 2009 (deposit return 30->60 days; 18-17-501 rewritten to defer to 18-16-301 et seq.), Act 1052 of 2021 (18-17-502 habitability, context), and Act 459 of 2025 (preemption expanded to application fees and deposits). Corroborated against the Arkansas Attorney General's landlord-tenant page (official state source) and Legal Aid of Arkansas. 2025 regular session swept for landlord-tenant acts (only Act 459 touches a figure shown here; SB 501 died in committee 2025-05-05 per the official arkleg bill page); the 2026 fiscal session amended no section of Title 18 or Title 14. September 5, 2026 addendum: the decisive figures touched by the 2025-2026 enactments reviewed that day were re-read on the official host — §§ 14-16-601, 14-54-1409 and 18-17-502 and Acts 2025, No. 459 on arkleg.state.ar.us and the State's official code service; the earlier reads stand as recorded. October 2026: the deposit, rent increase, late fee, entry and eviction answers were read again on the enrolled acts on arkleg.state.ar.us (Act 1004 of 2007 with Acts 311, 482 and 559 of 2009, Act 271 of 2011, Act 315 of 2019 and Act 1052 of 2021 for chapter 18-17; Act 1431 of 2005, Acts 535 and 728 of 2007, Act 1052 of 2021 and Act 414 of 2023 for the unlawful detainer sections; Act 159 of 2017; Act 459 of 2025), with the legislature's register of code sections amended for every session from 2013 to 2026, the court rules and opinions on opinions.arcourts.gov and Attorney General Opinion No. 2025-032. The code itself was not opened for that reading, and no act published there sets out the 1979 deposit sections 18-16-301 to 18-16-304 and 18-16-306. The statements that rest on text only the code prints are held: each is listed with the date it was last verified. Every other statement on the deposit, rent increase, late fee, entry and eviction pages was confirmed on October 2, 2026.