Is there a legal limit on late fees in Maine?

4% of the amount due for one month (14 M.R.S. § 6028(2)). None needed — Maine has a hard statutory cap (4%) rather than a reasonableness test. §6028 has been unchanged since 1987 (PL 1987, c. 215 and c. 605).

Can a landlord charge a daily late fee in Maine?

Daily fees are not addressed as a structure, but any late-payment penalty is bounded by the 4%-of-one-month ceiling, so accruing daily fees cannot lawfully exceed 4% of a month's rent for a late payment.

What late fees can a landlord charge in Maine?

Verified October 1, 2026 All Maine topics →

Check your municipality. Maine 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: Portland, South Portland.

What the state record says

Maine does not preempt local rent control, and at least two cities, Portland and South Portland, regulate rents. Portland has run voter-initiated rent control since 2021, allowing 2.2% for calendar 2026, one increase per 12 months, and 90 days' notice; South Portland caps annual increases at 10% for units whose owner, counting affiliates, owns 16 or more housing units. There is no statewide rent control or percentage cap (§6016's habitability bar is a condition on increases, not a cap). Portland's ordinance is Portland City Code ch. 6, secs. 6-231 to 6-239: an annual Allowable Increase Percentage published each September 1 (2.2% for calendar 2026), one increase per 12 months, +5% of base rent on voluntary turnover, banked increases, a hard 10% ceiling per increase, Rent Board review, and 90 days' written notice, plus a local one-month deposit cap and application-fee ban. South Portland's is a council-enacted rent stabilization ordinance (Ordinance No. 17-22/23 of February 21, 2023; a 10% annual cap for units whose owner, counting affiliates, owns 16 or more housing units; automatically repealed May 27, 2030 unless renewed). The former state enabling chapter (30-A ch. 167, 'Municipal Rent Control') was repealed in 1995 with nothing enacted in its place; municipalities act under home rule (30-A §3001).

Maine caps residential late fees at 4% of one month's rent and builds in a 15-day statutory grace period: a rent payment is not legally 'late' until 15 days after it was due, so with rent due on the 1st no penalty can attach before the 16th.

Cited to 14 M.R.S. § 6028 (1)-(3) and 1 more cited source · Verified October 1, 2026

On top of the cap and the grace period, no late fee may be charged at all unless the landlord gave the tenant WRITTEN notice — at the time the rental agreement was entered — that a penalty of up to 4% of one month's rent may be charged for late payment; skip that disclosure at signing and the fee is unenforceable for the tenancy. All three rules date to 1987 and have never been amended. The 'late fees' statute that allows the greater of $20 or 20% belongs to Maine's self-service storage law, not residential rentals.

Maine late fees at a glance

Statutory cap	4% of the amount due for one month (14 M.R.S. § 6028(2))
Mandatory grace period	15 days
Must be in the lease	Not addressed by statute
Daily fees	Daily fees are not addressed as a structure, but any late-payment penalty is bounded by the 4%-of-one-month ceiling, so accruing daily fees cannot lawfully exceed 4% of a month's rent for a late payment. Late fees are also expressly excluded from the definitions of 'rent' and 'mandatory recurring fee' (§6000(1-A), (1-B)).
Reasonableness standard	None needed — Maine has a hard statutory cap (4%) rather than a reasonableness test. §6028 has been unchanged since 1987 (PL 1987, c. 215 and c. 605).

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

Notes and caveats

15 days is a true statutory grace period — Subsection 1 defines lateness itself: 'A payment of rent is late if it is not made within 15 days from the time the payment is due.' The 15 days is recorded as a grace period because it is a genuine statutory precondition to any penalty, not a custom.
The 4% cap is measured against one month's rent — Subsection 2 says a landlord 'may not assess a penalty ... which exceeds 4% of the amount due for one month' — the base is one month's rent due.
Disclosure at inception — even for oral tenancies — Subsection 3 requires written notice 'at the time they entered into the rental agreement' that a penalty up to 4% of one month's rent may be charged. Strictly this is a written-disclosure-at-inception duty rather than a lease-clause requirement: a lease clause is the natural vehicle, but even an oral tenancy needs the written notice.
No exemptions, and no second statute — § 6028 contains no exemptions, and no other residential late-fee provision exists anywhere in ch. 710 (§§ 6021-6030-K) or ch. 709, subch. 1.
Confusion trap: the 'Late fees' statute in search results is storage law — 10 M.R.S. § 1376 ('Late fees' — the greater of $20 or 20%, with a 3-day rule) is the Self-Service Storage Act and surfaces in search results; it has nothing to do with residential rent.
Two separate clocks: fee grace vs. eviction arrears — The 7-day eviction notice for nonpayment under § 6002 requires rent to be 7 or more days in arrears — a separate clock from the 15-day late-fee grace period.
Late fees are not 'rent' since January 1, 2025 — § 6000(1-A) and (1-B) expressly exclude late-payment fees from 'rent' and 'mandatory recurring fees,' so the § 6015 fee-increase notice rules do not govern late-fee terms; the § 6028 at-inception disclosure does.
Verified — All three elements that decide a late fee here — the 15-day definition of lateness, the 4% cap, and the disclosure duty — come from the official text of § 6028 published by the Maine Revisor of Statutes.

Common questions: Maine 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 Maine?: 4% of the amount due for one month (14 M.R.S. § 6028(2)). None needed — Maine has a hard statutory cap (4%) rather than a reasonableness test. §6028 has been unchanged since 1987 (PL 1987, c. 215 and c. 605).
Is there a grace period before rent is late in Maine?: 15 days.
Does a late fee have to be written into the lease in Maine?: Not addressed by statute.
Can a landlord charge a daily late fee in Maine?: Daily fees are not addressed as a structure, but any late-payment penalty is bounded by the 4%-of-one-month ceiling, so accruing daily fees cannot lawfully exceed 4% of a month's rent for a late payment.

Citations

14 M.R.S. § 6028 · (1)-(3) (verified 2026) Official source
14 M.R.S. § 6000 · (1-A), (1-B) (verified 2026) Official source

How this record was verified: Direct read of statute text on the Maine Revisor of Statutes site (legislature.maine.gov). October 1, 2026: every section the security deposit, rent increase, late fee, entry and eviction answers rest on was read there with its history line: 14 M.R.S. §§ 6000 to 6017, 6021-A, 6022-A, 6024-A, 6025 to 6026, 6028, 6030, 6030-H and 6031 to 6039; 1 M.R.S. § 71; 10 M.R.S. §§ 9091 to 9100; and 30-A M.R.S. § 3001, with the repealed municipal rent control chapter (former §§ 3601 to 3606). The statute pages were current through October 1, 2025 that day and do not yet print the 2026 session, so each 2026 public law that changes these answers was read in its chaptered text: P.L. 2025, c. 767 (the entry remedy and the personal-information section, in force July 29, 2026), c. 691 (lot rent in a manufactured housing community) and c. 650, Part GGGG (the Maine Eviction Prevention Program). P.L. 2023, c. 594 was read in its chaptered text for its January 1, 2025 effective date. Rule 80D of the Maine Rules of Civil Procedure was read on the Judicial Branch's site, and the Portland and South Portland rent ordinances in the cities' own publications.