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 July 10, 2026 All Arkansas topics →

Measure that did not become law. The following recent proposal failed and is not law — noted here because 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 was appropriations-only; watch for a refile in the 2027 regular session (Arkansas holds regular sessions in odd years). (checked 2026-07-10).

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 Arkansas statutes · Verified July 10, 2026

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 no other state shares: 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 July 10, 2026), landlordatlas.com/laws/late-fees/arkansas/" — free to cite and quote with a link (how these records are verified). Every figure above is cited to the Arkansas statute in the citations section below.

Check a late fee against the Arkansas rules — free, no signup, built on the same verified Arkansas rules 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 — sharper than most states — 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.

Statute citations

A.C.A. § 18-17-401 (rent payable without demand or notice at the time and place agreed) (b)(1) (verified 2026) Unofficial mirror
A.C.A. § 18-17-301 (definitions — 'rent' includes late charges, confirming fees are lease terms) (10) (verified 2026) Unofficial mirror
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) Unofficial mirror

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 was appropriations-only.