Washington Court Filing Fees by County

How Washington court filing fees are actually set

Washington's eviction filing fee behaves like Florida's, not Georgia's: it is fixed in the statute book, not set county by county. RCW 36.18.020, RCW 36.18.012 and RCW 36.18.016 together set a residential unlawful detainer filing fee of $135.00 (due when you file, if the case ends in a default judgment), rising to $247.00 total if the tenant files an answer or the landlord asks for a show-cause order, and a flat $290.00 for a non-residential (commercial) unlawful detainer. We checked the clerk's own fee page in six counties spanning the state — King, Kittitas, Yakima, Jefferson, Franklin and Grays Harbor, from the biggest urban county to small rural ones — and every one prints those same three figures against the same RCW citations. One county's own page, Columbia's, prints something different for the up-front amount: $85.00 rather than $135.00, though it converges on the same $247.00 if the case is contested. We think that is a documentation gap rather than a real local option; see the open question below. Small claims is a genuinely different, and genuinely cheaper, filing: a flat $35.00 under RCW 12.40.020, the same whether you are claiming $50 or the full $10,000 ceiling, and the same number statewide because it is set the same way — by statute, with no county discretion at all.

The statutory caps

Unlike Georgia, Washington has a genuine statewide schedule for these two case types: the unlawful detainer figures come straight out of RCW 36.18.020 and RCW 36.18.012 with no county rule-making involved, and the small claims fee comes straight out of RCW 12.40.020. Every county clerk's fee page is supposed to be reprinting the same statute, not setting its own number.

Source: RCW 36.18.020; RCW 36.18.012; RCW 36.18.016, Clerk's fees and surcharges (unlawful detainer, jury demand); additional unlawful detainer fee on answer. RCW 36.18.020, as most recently amended by 2025's SHB 1207; RCW 36.18.012(4)'s $112 answer fee and RCW 36.18.016(3)'s jury demand fees. The $135.00 residential figure is built from three pieces: a $45.00 unlawful-detainer-specific filing fee under RCW 36.18.020(2)(a) (lower than the $200.00 general civil filing fee because chapter 59.18 or 59.20 tenancies get their own discounted rate), a $40.00 surcharge under RCW 36.18.020(5)(c), and a $50.00 surcharge under RCW 36.18.020(6) that 2025's SHB 1207 added on top. If the defendant answers or the plaintiff requests a show-cause order, RCW 36.18.012(4) adds $112.00 more, for $247.00 total. A non-residential unlawful detainer does not get the discounted $45.00 rate, so it starts from the $200.00 general civil fee instead: $200 + $40 + $50 = $290.00. Checked August 1, 2026.

Eviction and small claims are two different cases in two different courts with two different fee schedules, and it matters which one you are looking at. An unlawful detainer (eviction) is filed in the Superior Court of the county where the rental property sits, and costs $135.00 to $290.00 depending on whether it is residential or commercial and whether it ends up contested. Small claims is a separate department of the District Court, costs a flat $35.00 no matter the amount claimed, and can only be used for a money claim up to $10,000.00 (or $5,000.00 if the plaintiff is a business) — a landlord cannot use small claims to remove a tenant, only to chase money afterward.

Every one of Washington's 39 counties has its own Superior Court Clerk who takes your unlawful detainer filing and your fee, so this site can publish a page per county the way it does for Florida, not the way it has to handle Ohio's mix of municipal and county courts. What is shared in some of the smallest counties is not the courthouse but the judge: Washington groups its 39 counties into 30 superior court judicial districts, and in rural districts one judge rotates between two or three counties' dockets. That changes whose calendar your hearing lands on, not where you file or what you pay.

The residential unlawful detainer filing fee is about as close to a pure statutory number as this site tracks anywhere: $45.00 base fee plus a $40.00 surcharge plus a $50.00 surcharge, all three set in RCW 36.18.020, add up to exactly the $135.00 that six different counties' own clerk pages print. That is Florida's shape, not Georgia's — no county rule-making is involved. The one exception we found, Columbia County, prints a lower up-front number that we believe has not caught up with a 2025 statewide fee increase; see the open question in fee_structure for the detail.

Service works in two separate steps with two separate price tags. The initial summons and complaint is usually served by a private process server at a market rate, because Washington law does not require the Sheriff for that step. The writ of restitution — the order that actually puts the tenant out after judgment — is executed by the county Sheriff, and this is one of the few charges on this site that a county is explicitly allowed by statute to price for itself: RCW 36.18.040(3) lets each county's legislative authority set that fee, and the sheriff's-office deposits we found ranged from $100.00 to $240.00 before mileage.

There is a real jury demand fee in Washington superior court — $125.00 for six jurors, $250.00 for twelve, under RCW 36.18.016(3) — which is worth knowing because it applies to a contested unlawful detainer the same as any other civil case. There is no equivalent fee, and no jury at all, in the small claims department: RCW 12.40.080 describes an informal proceeding decided by a judge, and the county and legal-aid pages we checked confirm small claims cases in Washington are never heard by a jury.

Washington's fee-waiver rule, General Rule 34, gives you four different ways to qualify for the same full waiver — already receiving public benefits, low household income, high unavoidable expenses relative to income, or a catch-all hardship test — rather than the single poverty-affidavit test Georgia uses or the one income-and-asset test Florida uses. It is still all-or-nothing once you qualify: Washington does not offer a partial or sliding-scale waiver the way some states do.

Common questions