Is there a legal limit on late fees in Connecticut?

The cap is the lesser of (1) $5 per day up to a maximum of $50, or (2) 5% of the delinquent rent payment. No more than ONE late charge may be imposed per delinquent rent payment.

Does a late fee have to be written into the lease in Connecticut?

Yes — in Connecticut a late fee must be stated in the lease.

Can a landlord charge a daily late fee in Connecticut?

Yes, but double-capped. Daily accrual is the structure the statute itself contemplates ($5 per day), while the running total may not exceed $50 and the whole charge may not exceed 5% of the delinquent rent payment if that is less (47a-15a(b)).

What late fees can a landlord charge in Connecticut?

Verified October 1, 2026 All Connecticut topics →

Check your municipality. Connecticut does not preempt local rent regulation — city or county ordinances may impose rent caps, notice periods, and fee limits that are stricter than the state law on this page. Verify your municipality's ordinances before relying on any figure below. Verified local pages: Connecticut municipalities, Stamford.

What the state record says

Connecticut has no statewide rent cap or stabilization formula. It instead mandates local rent oversight: every municipality of 15,000 or more must maintain a fair rent commission, and those commissions can roll a rent back to a fair and equitable level when it is harsh and unconscionable. The mandate is Conn. Gen. Stat. 7-148b, as amended by Nov. Sp. Sess. P.A. 25-1, eff. 2026-01-01: every municipality with a population of 15,000 or more MUST maintain a fair rent commission (or join a joint or regional one), and any smaller municipality MAY create one. Commissions receive complaints about rents and 'rental charges' (including any fee on top of rent), and may roll a rent back to a fair and equitable level if, weighing the 13 factors in 7-148c (comparable rents, condition, services, repairs, taxes and debt service, code compliance, tenant income, amount and frequency of increases, reinvestment), it is 'so excessive ... as to be harsh and unconscionable' (7-148c, 7-148d). They can also suspend rent into escrow for health/safety violations and order landlords to stop retaliating against complainants; violations of commission orders draw fines of $25-$100 per offense, with each day beyond five a fresh offense (7-148d, 7-148f). Every municipality required to have a commission must adopt the ordinance on or before January 1, 2028, and a required municipality that created a commission before 2026 may not abolish it before then unless it joins a joint or regional commission (7-148b(c)). The original mandate (25,000+, deadline July 1, 2023) came from P.A. 22-30. Separately, using rent-setting algorithms that compute on nonpublic competitor data is an unlawful practice under the Connecticut Antitrust Act (chapter 624) as of January 1, 2026 (47a-4f).

Connecticut gives residential tenants a statutory 9-day grace period for monthly rent (4 days for week-to-week tenancies) and caps late fees at the lesser of $5 per day up to $50 total, or 5% of the delinquent rent payment.

Cited to Conn. Gen. Stat. § 47a-15a (2026 Supplement text, as amended by Nov. Sp. Sess. P.A. 25-1 § 38) (a)-(b) and 3 more cited sources · Verified October 1, 2026

In a mobile manufactured home park the park statute also limits lease terms: at least nine days of grace (fourteen if an online payment system prevented payment) and a late penalty of no more than 5% of the lot rent, or 4% of the rent for a home and lot together; a resident who owns the home and rents only the lot is outside chapter 830 and relies on those park rules (21-83(a)(2)-(4), 47a-2(b)). No late charge may be assessed at all unless the lease contains a valid written late-charge agreement, no fee may attach before the grace period runs out — disguising an early fee as a 'discount' for on-time payment is equally banned — and only one late charge may be imposed per delinquent payment no matter how long it stays unpaid. Where a government program or charity pays part of the rent, the 5% arm is computed on the tenant's share only. Since January 1, 2026, the grace period stretches by five extra days if the landlord's own online rent-payment system prevented payment when due, and rent that goes unpaid because of such an outage cannot support a nonpayment eviction. A lease clause purporting to charge more, or sooner, is simply unenforceable, and a tenant more than 10 days late loses that month's security-deposit interest only if the landlord did not impose a late charge.

Connecticut late fees at a glance

Statutory cap	The cap is the lesser of (1) $5 per day up to a maximum of $50, or (2) 5% of the delinquent rent payment. No more than ONE late charge may be imposed per delinquent rent payment. Where a governmental or charitable entity pays part of the rent, the 5% arm is computed on the tenant's share only.
Mandatory grace period	9 days
Must be in the lease	Yes
Daily fees	Yes, but double-capped. Daily accrual is the structure the statute itself contemplates ($5 per day), while the running total may not exceed $50 and the whole charge may not exceed 5% of the delinquent rent payment if that is less (47a-15a(b)). Only one late charge may be assessed per delinquent payment no matter how long the rent stays unpaid, so re-charging the same month is unlawful.
Reasonableness standard	Not addressed by statute

Cite this page: "Landlord Atlas, Connecticut Late Fee Laws (verified October 1, 2026), landlordatlas.com/laws/late-fees/connecticut/" — 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 Connecticut rules — free, no signup, built on the same verified Connecticut law as this page.

Notes and caveats

'Connecticut has no late-fee cap' — stale since October 2023 — true only before October 1, 2023, when P.A. 23-207 §8 enacted the cap.
5% of the DELINQUENT payment, not the monthly rent — the statutory base for the 5% arm is the delinquent rent payment — so a half-paid month yields a smaller maximum — and for subsidized tenancies it is computed on the tenant's share only.
Never quote '$50' or '5%' alone — the cap is the lesser-of structure: $5 per day up to a $50 maximum, or 5% of the delinquent rent payment, whichever is less. Quoting either arm alone misstates it.
9 days is the monthly figure — 4 for weekly, +5 for outages — The 9-day figure is the grace period for monthly and month-to-month tenancies; week-to-week tenancies get 4 days. Since January 1, 2026 (Nov. Sp. Sess. P.A. 25-1 § 38), the period extends by five days when a landlord's online rental payment system prevents the payment of rent when due, for the affected week or month only.
A payment-system outage also blocks eviction — 47a-23(a)(1)(D) as amended (effective January 1, 2026) bars nonpayment evictions where the landlord's online payment system blocked payment within the grace period.
The written-agreement requirement is double-anchored — 47a-15a(b) requires 'a valid written agreement to pay a late charge,' and 47a-4(a)(8)-(9) separately voids lease terms charging before the grace period ends — including sham 'early-payment discounts,' banned since P.A. 87-154 — or above the 47a-15a amounts. Violating provisions are simply unenforceable (47a-4(b)).
Payments apply to rent first — no fee-pyramiding — 47a-7d(e) (2025) requires tenant payments to be applied first to rent, then to fees, blocking fees from pyramiding into 'unpaid rent.'
Why no reasonableness standard is listed — the hard statutory cap displaces any reasonableness test.
The 2026 disclosure bill died — HB 5359 (2026), which would have added late-fee disclosure duties and a cost-free payment method, died on the House calendar at adjournment.

Common questions: Connecticut 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 Connecticut?: The cap is the lesser of (1) $5 per day up to a maximum of $50, or (2) 5% of the delinquent rent payment. No more than ONE late charge may be imposed per delinquent rent payment.
Is there a grace period before rent is late in Connecticut?: 9 days.
Does a late fee have to be written into the lease in Connecticut?: Yes — in Connecticut a late fee must be stated in the lease.
Can a landlord charge a daily late fee in Connecticut?: Yes, but double-capped. Daily accrual is the structure the statute itself contemplates ($5 per day), while the running total may not exceed $50 and the whole charge may not exceed 5% of the delinquent rent payment if that is less (47a-15a(b)).

Citations

Conn. Gen. Stat. § 47a-15a (2026 Supplement text, as amended by Nov. Sp. Sess. P.A. 25-1 § 38) · (a)-(b) (verified 2026) Official source
Conn. Gen. Stat. § 47a-15a · (b) (verified 2026) Official source
Conn. Gen. Stat. § 47a-4 (late-charge lease terms: no fee before grace period ends, no fee above the 47a-15a amounts; violations unenforceable) · (a)(8)-(9), (b) (verified 2026) Official source
P.A. 23-207, § 8 (late-fee cap enacted, eff. 2023-10-01) · Sec. 8 (verified 2026) Official source

How this record was verified: Direct read of statute text on the official Connecticut General Assembly site (cga.ct.gov): chapters 830, 831, 832 and 98 downloaded in full from the current-revision pages AND from the 2026 Supplement (revised to January 1, 2026), which carries the 2025-session amendments to Conn. Gen. Stat. 47a-15a, 47a-21, 47a-23 and 7-148b — the supplement text is the operative text used here. Every number that decides an answer here was read at least twice in independent documents: the 2-month/1-month deposit caps, 21-day/15-day return deadline, double-deposit penalty, deposit-index interest rule, 9-day/4-day grace periods, $5-per-day/$50/5%-of-delinquent-payment late-fee cap, and the reasonable-notice entry standard were each confirmed verbatim on the official pages; the 2025 changes (fair-rent-commission threshold 25,000 to 15,000, +5-day online-payment-outage grace extension, rent-algorithm ban) were confirmed in both the 2026 Supplement and the enrolled November Special Session Public Act 25-1 (HB 8002) PDF on cga.ct.gov; the 30-to-21-day deposit-deadline change and late-fee cap were traced to PA 23-207 sections 8, 38 and 39 (effective 2023-10-01) in the enrolled act PDF. The 2026 security-deposit interest rate (0.49% deposit index) was double-read on two official Department of Banking pages. 2026-session sweep: PA 26-79 section 3 (SB 218) read in the enrolled PDF and incorporated when it took effect on October 1, 2026; bill-status pages read for HB 5092, HB 5359, SB 257 and SB 274, all of which died at the 2026-05-06 adjournment. September 5, 2026 addendum: the decisive figures touched by the 2025-2026 enactments reviewed that day were re-read on the official host — §§ 7-148b, 47a-4d, 47a-4f, 47a-15a, 47a-21 and 47a-23 in the 2026 Supplement on cga.ct.gov, with the 2026 public acts; the earlier reads stand as recorded. September 12, 2026 addendum: the security deposit figures in § 47a-21(b), (d), (h), (i), (j) and (k), the § 47a-15a grace periods and late-charge cap, and the § 47a-16 entry standard were re-read on cga.ct.gov (the 2026 Supplement for chapters 830 and 831 and the base revision for § 47a-16); §§ 47a-7c, 47-283 to 47-293 and 1-268 were read there the same day. The earlier reads stand as recorded. October 1, 2026 addendum: the 2026 public acts that took effect that day — P.A. 26-79 § 3 (§ 47a-21(j)(1)), P.A. 26-113 § 1 (§ 47a-4), P.A. 26-11 § 15 (§ 47a-23c) and P.A. 26-77 §§ 15, 16, 26 and 27 (§§ 46a-64 and 46a-64c) — were re-read in the enrolled acts on cga.ct.gov, with § 36a-50 for the civil-penalty ceiling; the General Statutes pages do not yet print them. The same day, every section the security deposit, rent increase, late fee, entry and eviction answers rest on was read again on cga.ct.gov: chapters 98, 412, 828, 830, 831, 832, 833 and 834 in the General Statutes revised to January 1, 2025, and each section the 2026 Supplement reprints in the Supplement. That reading added § 47a-4e (P.A. 24-143, § 17), the rent-increase notice section in force since October 1, 2024, which the rent increase answers had not stated. The Practice Book (2026 edition) and the Judicial Branch's summary process publications were read on jud.ct.gov.