Colorado Court Filing Fees by County

How Colorado court filing fees are actually set

Colorado's eviction filing fee does not vary by county, and the reason is structural: unlike Georgia's or Ohio's locally funded courts, every Colorado county court is a branch of one state agency, the Colorado Judicial Branch, and that agency publishes one fee list that governs all 64 counties, Denver included. What we found on that list is a fee that is uniform statewide but tiered by the dollar amount the landlord is claiming, not by geography: $95.00 if the claim is under $1,000 (which covers most possession-only filings and small back-rent claims), $115.00 for $1,000 to $14,999.99, and $145.00 for $15,000 to $25,000, all under C.R.S. § 13-32-101. A tenant answering an eviction pays nothing at all, at any dollar tier — that is a flat, confirmed $0. We checked several individual county and sheriff websites looking for a locally set number that would contradict the state list, including Denver, Jefferson, Douglas, Boulder, El Paso and Larimer; none of them publish a different figure, and most simply do not publish their own fee page at all, deferring to the state's one list, which is consistent with fees being set by the legislature rather than by the county.

The statutory caps

This is one statewide statutory table published by the Colorado Judicial Branch itself, not a county-by-county schedule the way Georgia's is. We are showing the eviction rows and the small claims rows side by side on purpose, because the small claims rows can never actually apply to an eviction — C.R.S. § 13-6-403(2) rules eviction cases out of small claims court entirely.

Source: C.R.S. § 13-32-101, Docket fees. C.R.S. § 13-32-101(1)(c), as amended; forcible entry and detainer procedure at C.R.S. § 13-40-101 et seq.. We did not find a separate surcharge stacked on top of the $95.00 / $115.00 / $145.00 tiers the way Florida stacks a $4.00 and a $1.00 fee onto its base number. The Colorado Judicial Branch's own current fee list shows those three figures as the whole amount due at filing, and we found no discrepancy to reconcile. Checked August 1, 2026.

Every eviction in Colorado is heard in county court, and there is one county court per county, the same structure as Florida rather than Ohio's patchwork of municipal courts. The one real exception worth knowing is Denver: Denver County Court is, in its own words, "both a municipal and state court," meaning the same courthouse and clerk's office handle Denver's own city-ordinance cases on one docket alongside the ordinary state eviction and civil docket that every other county has. It is still the court that hears a Denver eviction, and we found nothing to suggest it prices that case differently from anywhere else in the state.

Colorado's filing fee does not vary by county, but for a different reason than Florida's. Florida's clerks are locally elected officials who simply collect a fee the legislature happens to have fixed statewide. Colorado's county courts are branches of a single state agency, the Colorado Judicial Branch, which is why one official fee list covers every county's eviction filing: $95.00 if the claim is under $1,000, $115.00 up to $14,999.99, and $145.00 up to $25,000, and it costs a tenant nothing to answer.

Small claims court cannot hear an eviction at all in Colorado — C.R.S. § 13-6-403(2) rules out "actions of forcible entry, forcible detainer, or unlawful detainer" by name. If you see a small claims fee listed somewhere ($31.00 or $55.00 to file, depending on the amount), that is not the number that applies to an eviction; the eviction fee tiers are the county civil ones above.

Colorado does allow a jury trial in an eviction case, unlike Georgia's magistrate court and unlike Colorado's own small claims division, which has no jury at all under C.R.S. § 13-6-414. The fee to demand one is $98.00, and Colorado does not charge a different amount for a six-person versus a twelve-person jury the way some states do.

The Sheriff's fee to serve the initial summons and to execute the writ of restitution afterward are the one place in this record we could not pin a number down. State law caps them at $35.00 and $200.00, but both statutes hand the actual number to each county by ordinance or resolution, and we could not find a current, county-specific fee page to confirm what any particular sheriff's office actually charges. Call the sheriff's civil unit in the county where the property sits before you budget for service or a lockout.

Colorado runs a state-funded Eviction Legal Defense Fund that pays for free mediation between a landlord and tenant, along with legal representation and advice, for a tenant at or below 200% of the federal poverty line. That is a benefit program, not a court fee, and we found no separate court-charged mediation fee in an ordinary Colorado eviction.

Common questions