Pennsylvania Court Filing Fees by County

How Pennsylvania court filing fees are actually set

The headline answer is structural, not a dollar range: Pennsylvania's eviction filing fee is fixed by statute everywhere, and it does not vary by county discretion the way Georgia's does, but it does depend on which of two court systems hears the case, and that split falls along exactly one line — Philadelphia versus everywhere else. In the 66 counties served by a magisterial district judge, the statewide Landlord/Tenant fee table set under 42 Pa.C.S. § 1725.1 and reissued each January 1 by the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts runs $100.50 for a claim of $2,000 or less, $122.50 for $2,000.01–$4,000, and $167.00 for $4,000.01–$12,000, current as of the table effective January 1, 2025. We confirmed that table against Allegheny, Bucks, Delaware and Montgomery counties' own guidance, and all of them describe the identical tiered structure rather than a locally set number, which is what you would expect since a magisterial district judge has no authority to set fees. Philadelphia has no magisterial district judges at all. Landlord-tenant cases there go to the Municipal Court, which publishes its own, separate fee table: $94.75 for $2,000 or less, $116.75 for $2,000.01–$10,000, and $138.75 for over $10,000 — lower than the statewide table at every tier, mainly because Philadelphia folds its $27.00 service charge into that total rather than billing it separately, something the 66 magisterial-district counties do not do.

The statutory caps

These are two real statewide tables, not a county-by-county patchwork. Every one of the 66 magisterial-district counties uses the first table; Philadelphia alone uses the second. Which table applies is decided by where the rental property sits, not by anything a county or a judge chooses.

Source: 42 Pa.C.S. § 1725.1, Costs (magisterial district judge cost schedule). 42 Pa.C.S. § 1725.1, with its dollar figures adjusted every January 1 by the increase in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Workers under subsection (b) — a mechanism most recently extended to January 1, 2040 by a 2024 amendment.. There is no gap to reconcile here the way there is in Georgia. § 1725.1 does not print a single flat number; it sets base figures and an automatic annual CPI adjustment, and the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts publishes the resulting dollar amounts in a cost table every January. The $100.50 / $122.50 / $167.00 Landlord/Tenant figures we cite are that table's January 1, 2025 numbers, not our own arithmetic, and they match what county magisterial district offices tell filers to expect. Philadelphia Municipal Court's $94.75 / $116.75 / $138.75 table sits outside § 1725.1 altogether; Municipal Court is a court of record under a different part of Title 42, and its cost schedule is published separately by the First Judicial District rather than by the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts. Checked August 1, 2026.

The single most important thing to know about Pennsylvania is that the county is the wrong unit almost everywhere else in the country would expect, but it happens to work here anyway, for a specific reason. Evictions are heard by magisterial district judges, and there are 501 magisterial districts spread across the 66 counties outside Philadelphia — often a dozen or more to a county — so in most states that would mean the fee could vary block by block the way it does in Ohio or New York. It does not in Pennsylvania, because a magisterial district judge has no authority to set a local fee. Every one of those 501 districts charges from the same statewide table. The only county that genuinely breaks the pattern is Philadelphia, which has zero magisterial district judges and instead sends every landlord-tenant case to its own Municipal Court, under a separate fee table entirely. That is why this state's fee is both fixed by statute and still not a single number: it is two numbers, one for Philadelphia and one for everyone else.

Service is billed separately from the filing fee in the 66 magisterial-district counties, and it is not optional or bundled in. 44 Pa.C.S. § 7161 sets a constable's charge at $13.00 to serve the complaint on the first defendant, $5.00 for each additional defendant, and $90.00 to execute an order for possession (plus $2.50 for each return of service and mileage), the same statewide. Budget for that on top of the $100.50–$167.00 filing fee. Philadelphia does the opposite: its Municipal Court folds a $27.00 service charge directly into the $94.75–$138.75 filing total, so the number on the form already includes it, and then charges a separate flat $343.00 for the Sheriff to execute the writ of possession afterward.

There is no jury trial, and so no jury fee, at the level where a Pennsylvania eviction is actually decided — not in the 66 magisterial-district counties and not in Philadelphia Municipal Court. A jury only enters the picture if the losing party appeals to the Court of Common Pleas for a trial de novo, which is a different filing with its own separate cost, in Philadelphia's case an appeal fee of $195.54 plus an ongoing rent-deposit requirement while the appeal is pending.

Pennsylvania's own courts publish the current cost table every January, because 42 Pa.C.S. § 1725.1 ties the numbers to an automatic Consumer Price Index adjustment rather than leaving them fixed. That is worth knowing before you compare an older guide's figures to what we show here: Allegheny County's own 2020 eviction guide quoted $82.00 for a landlord-tenant claim of $2,000 or less, and the current statewide table puts the same tier at $100.50. Neither number is wrong; they are five years apart on the same escalating schedule, and the CPI adjustment mechanism itself was extended by a 2024 amendment so it will keep running through January 1, 2040.

One cost we could not pin down to the penny is the 'Constable Ed.' line that appears as a blank field on Bucks County's own landlord-tenant complaint form. We found a $5.00 per-docket Constable Education and Training Fund fee for criminal cases under 44 Pa.C.S. § 7149, but not a confirmed civil-case rate, so we left it out of the totals here rather than print a guess. If your bill from a magisterial district judge's office includes a small charge you do not see accounted for above, this is almost certainly it.

Common questions