Court Fee for a Recovery Suit in Delhi: How Much You Pay and When

Court fee on a Delhi money suit, in brief

In Delhi, the court fee on a recovery suit is charged on what you claim. The rule sits in Schedule I, Article 1 of the Court Fees Act, 1870, as it applies to Delhi. The schedule climbs in small steps. Past Rs 50,000, every Rs 5,000 of claim adds a fixed sum, and each step comes to just under one percent. That's why many Delhi lawyers plan with a rough rule of thumb. A little under one percent of the claim, plus a small base amount.

It doesn't matter whether you file a regular suit or a summary suit under Order XXXVII of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 (CPC). It doesn't matter whether the case lands in a district commercial court or the Delhi High Court. Same fee. Only the value you put on the claim moves it.

One thing to keep straight. Court fee is a statutory charge paid to the State, and your lawyer's fees are a completely separate matter, agreed between you in writing. Don't mix them up. Whenever this guide talks about money, it means the government and procedural costs of the suit and nothing else.

Ad valorem fee, and why Delhi costs less than people expect

Ad valorem is Latin for "according to value". A fixed fee is the opposite. You pay the same few rupees whatever the claim. A money suit always carries ad valorem fee, because the relief you want is a sum of money and the law treats that sum as the value of the suit.

In 2012 the Delhi Government brought in the Court Fees (Delhi Amendment) Act, 2012. It pushed fees up sharply, with slabs of two, three and four percent. It didn't last. The Delhi High Court Bar Association challenged it, and in October 2013 the Delhi High Court struck the amendment down. Delhi courts have applied the older schedule ever since, which is why the effective rate on big claims stays below one percent. Still, check the current schedule with the registry or the court's own fee table before you file. A fresh amendment could change these numbers.

Ignore websites that put Delhi at two to five percent. Some online calculators still run on the struck-down 2012 slabs, and others use another state's table. A wrong number in your budget does no harm. On the plaint, it does.

Rough court fee for typical claim values in Delhi

Reading the table properly

Treat these as rounded planning numbers worked from the Delhi schedule. They aren't exact, because the schedule counts every Rs 5,000 or part of it and so the precise fee turns on the precise claim figure you finally settle on. On the day you file, your lawyer's office or the registry's calculator will give you the exact figure. Check it then.

Look at what's missing from the table. Delhi has no separate "commercial court fee". Take a Rs 40 lakh commercial suit and a Rs 40 lakh ordinary civil suit. Same fee. The Commercial Courts Act, 2015 changed the procedure, the timelines and the costs regime, but it left the fee schedule alone.

The last column moves too. Right now suits up to Rs 2 crore go to the district commercial courts, and anything above that goes to the Delhi High Court. A proposal to raise the district court limit has been under consideration since late 2025. Check the current limit before you decide where to file.

What counts in the claim value

You pay fee on the amount you ask the court to decree, as it stands on the filing date. That's the unpaid principal plus interest worked out to the day the plaint goes in. Section 12 of the Commercial Courts Act, 2015, which deals with valuing a commercial dispute for jurisdiction, says the same: interest up to filing counts. Interest you claim while the case runs (pendente lite, meaning during the suit) and after the decree isn't added. Nobody can put a number on it yet.

GST trips people up. If the customer hasn't paid the invoice at all, the debt is usually the full invoice including GST, and you pay fee on all of it. If they paid the GST part and held back the rest, claim only what's actually outstanding. And don't pad a simple recovery suit with "loss of business" estimates you can't prove. Every extra rupee costs fee. Worse, a head of claim with no papers behind it makes the court look harder at everything else.

Notice charges aren't added. Neither is your demand for "costs of the suit", since the court decides costs at the end. Interest is where most valuation errors happen, in our experience by a long way, so do read our note on how much interest you can claim on unpaid dues before you fix the rate.

Which Delhi court: value, territory and forum

Three questions decide the court. First, is this a commercial dispute under Section 2(1)(c) of the Commercial Courts Act, 2015? Most business contracts are, including sale of goods, supply, services, distribution, franchise and construction. Second, is the specified value Rs 3 lakh or more? If it is, you have a commercial suit. Below Rs 3 lakh it goes to an ordinary civil judge. The fee schedule doesn't change.

The third question is which district. Section 20 of the CPC lets you sue where the defendant lives or does business, or where the cause of action arose wholly or in part. That could be where the order was placed, where the goods were delivered or where payment was due. Delhi's district courts sit at Tis Hazari, Saket, Patiala House, Karkardooma, Rohini, Dwarka and Rouse Avenue, and each district's District Judge (Commercial Court) sits in its own complex. Our page on Delhi district commercial courts shows which complex covers which area.

Claims above the district limit go to the Delhi High Court's Commercial Division on its original side. Same schedule, though. Not sure whether your dispute counts as commercial, or where it belongs? Read which court will hear my case.

What each stage of a Delhi recovery suit costs and how long it takes

Working out and paying the fee, step by step

This is how a filing clerk and an advocate actually go about it. Once you know the order, you can check the number yourself.

1. Take the principal from your ledger

   Start with the unpaid invoices. Take off credit notes, part payments and any TDS the customer has actually deposited. What's left has to match your ledger, the statement of account attached to the plaint and the legal notice. When those three don't agree, the defendant pounces. In our experience it's the commonest line of attack on a recovery suit.

2. Add interest up to the filing date

   Calculate interest on each invoice from its due date to the date you expect to file. Use the contract rate, or a reasonable commercial rate if there isn't one. A registered micro or small supplier can claim the MSMED Act rate, three times the RBI bank rate. Put the working on a separate schedule. The court will want to see it.

3. Run the total through the Delhi schedule

   Apply Schedule I, Article 1. Above Rs 50,000, every Rs 5,000 or part of it adds a fixed step, so round the final figure with care. Plenty of offices keep the schedule on a spreadsheet. Where the court has its own calculator, that's the safest check.

4. Buy the e-court fee

   Delhi uses e-court fee, which you buy online through the Stock Holding Corporation of India's e-court fee system or at an authorised collection centre, and each certificate carries a unique number that gets entered or uploaded with the plaint. You'll rarely see physical stamps now.

5. File, then clear registry objections

   When you e-file, the registry matches the valuation paragraph in the plaint against the e-court fee certificate. Short fee means an objection, and you pay the balance. A muddled valuation paragraph is worse. You may have to amend it before the suit is even listed.

6. Put the receipt in your costs file

   Court fee is a cost you can get back. If the suit is decreed, the court can order the defendant to repay it as part of costs. Keep this receipt and the mediation fee receipt together. Decrees take time, and receipts go missing.

For the portal side of filing, see our guide to e-filing a commercial suit in Delhi.

Short fee, wrong valuation, and what the court does about it

A plaint with short court fee isn't thrown out on day one. Under Order VII Rule 11(c) of the CPC the court first gives the plaintiff time to pay the deficit, and rejects the plaint only if it still isn't paid. Section 149 of the CPC goes further. The court can allow deficient fee to be paid at a later stage, and once it's paid, the plaint counts as properly filed from the start.

Undervaluing on purpose is another matter. If you put a low value on the claim to save fee, the court can order revaluation under Order VII Rule 11(b). In a commercial suit you may also end up in the wrong court. Picture a Rs 2.3 crore claim dressed up as Rs 1.9 crore to stay in the district court. It'll probably come back to you after months of hearings.

Overvaluing is no cleverer. It wastes money, and it can look like an attempt to get into the High Court. When Advocate B.K. Singh checks a recovery plaint before filing, the valuation paragraph is one of the first things he reads against the statement of account. A mismatch there is easy for the defendant to spot. It's expensive to fix later.

Getting the fee refunded: settlement, mediation and Lok Adalat

Settle in pre-institution mediation under Section 12A of the Commercial Courts Act, and no suit is filed. No court fee either. The parties and the mediator sign the settlement, it has the same status as an arbitral award, and you can enforce it like a decree. That's one reason we treat Section 12A mediation as a real chance to get paid. It isn't just a box to tick.

Now suppose the suit is already filed. The court sends the parties to mediation, conciliation or Lok Adalat under Section 89 of the CPC, and the matter settles there. Section 16 of the Court Fees Act, 1870 then entitles the plaintiff to a refund of the court fee paid. Lok Adalat settlements also carry a refund under the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987. Some courts have allowed refunds where the parties settled between themselves and the court recorded the compromise, but practice varies. Ask for the refund in the compromise application itself.

Nothing happens on its own. You apply, the court passes an order, and then the money has to come back to you through the government treasury, which can easily take several weeks. Be patient. Ask at the time the settlement is recorded. Our page on settling a case midway explains how compromise decrees get recorded.

Costs people forget to budget for

• Process fee. There's a small fee for sending summons to each defendant, whether by post, courier, email or sometimes the bailiff. Add a defendant and it goes up a little.
• Vakalatnama and welfare stamp. A Delhi vakalatnama needs an Advocates Welfare Fund stamp. It's a small amount, but without it the filing won't be accepted.
• Mediation fee. You pay the Section 12A mediation fee before the suit. If the other side turns up, they share it equally.
• Translation and typing. The High Court may want certified English translations of documents in Hindi or any other language. Long account statements get bulky, and you're paying by volume.
• Local commissioner fee. Commercial suits in the Delhi High Court often have evidence recorded before a local commissioner. The court fixes the fee. Usually it's shared, or paid by whoever is leading evidence.
• Certified copies. Appeal and execution both need certified copies of the judgment and decree. The charges are small. The applications take time.
• Attachment and security. Ask for attachment before judgment under Order XXXVIII Rule 5 and the court may want attachment costs or an undertaking from you. If it gets to an execution sale, there are auction expenses as well.

Getting your court fee back from the defendant as costs

For commercial disputes, the Commercial Courts Act, 2015 rewrote Section 35 of the CPC. The general rule now is plain. The loser pays the winner's costs. Costs include court fee, witness fees and expenses, legal fees and other expenses of the proceedings. The court can depart from that rule, but it has to give reasons.

Court fee is the one cost that's almost always allowed when a money suit is decreed. It's fixed, it's on paper and nobody can argue with it. Legal fees are different, because the court assesses them itself and very often awards a lower figure than what you actually spent on the case. In a successful suit, then, the court fee usually gets added to what the defendant owes you. Whether you ever collect it depends on whether the defendant has assets. That's a question for execution of the decree.

Court fee on appeals, counterclaims and execution

Appeals against money decrees carry ad valorem fee too, worked out on the amount disputed in the appeal. Say the decree is for Rs 80 lakh and the defendant challenges all of it. Fee on Rs 80 lakh. If the plaintiff appeals only because the court refused Rs 10 lakh of interest, the fee is on Rs 10 lakh. Section 13 of the Commercial Courts Act gives you 60 days. Not more. Our page on appeals against commercial court judgments covers the rest.

A counterclaim is treated like a plaint, so a defendant who counterclaims for money pays ad valorem fee on it. Keep that in mind if you're the plaintiff. A big counterclaim costs the other side real money, and the fee often makes a defendant think twice about how much it wants to claim.

Execution is light on fee. In Delhi an execution application usually carries a small fixed fee, not ad valorem fee on the decree amount. What execution really costs you is time, and the expense of attachment and sale.

Delhi, UP or Haryana: the fee follows the court

Court fee is a state subject. Every state has its own schedule. File in a Delhi court and you pay the Delhi schedule. File in the commercial court at Ghaziabad or Gautam Buddh Nagar and Uttar Pradesh's court fee law applies, while Gurugram and Faridabad follow Haryana's. The rates and steps differ, and on larger claims the gap can run into lakhs. Check the current schedule for that state before filing.

You often get a choice. Say your office is in Delhi, the order went out from Delhi and payment was due in Delhi, but the customer's factory is in Noida. A Delhi court and the Noida court may both have territorial jurisdiction. Fee matters. It's not everything. How quickly that court disposes of commercial suits matters at least as much, and so do where the defendant's assets are for execution and where your witnesses are.

Watch the contract, too. An exclusive jurisdiction clause naming Delhi usually settles the matter, as long as Delhi courts had jurisdiction in the first place. If the clause names Gurugram and you file in Delhi to save fee, expect an objection under Order VII Rule 10 (return of plaint). That's months gone.

How the fee question looks for different businesses

Take a small supplier or MSME chasing Rs 5 to 15 lakh. The court fee is modest, often less than the mediation fee and less than what a month or two of delay costs. The bigger worry is whether the customer can pay. A registered micro or small enterprise also has the MSME Facilitation Council route under Section 18 of the MSMED Act, 2006. It doesn't carry a civil suit's ad valorem fee, and interest at three times the RBI bank rate applies. Compare the two before you pick.

For service firms, IT companies and agencies, the danger is valuation, not fee. Retainers, milestone payments and disputed change requests have to be split carefully into what's plainly due and what's arguable. It's fiddly work. Paying fee on arguable amounts is fine if you've got the paper. Paying fee on figures you'll drop later is money down the drain.

Lenders, and businesses that gave inter-corporate loans or advances, usually have a clean claim. Principal, agreed interest, a demand on record. Fee on Rs 1 to 2 crore is around one percent, and a decree gets it back as costs. Banks and financial institutions with claims of Rs 20 lakh and above usually go to the Debts Recovery Tribunal instead. That's a different fee regime, covered on drtadvocates.com.

Startups and large companies worry about different things. One percent of a big claim can hurt a startup at a bad moment, and it may be tempted to sue only for the clearly admitted part first. Careful. Order II Rule 2 of the CPC bars a second suit for any part you left out. A large company tends to ask something else: are the fee and the delay worth it against a customer it still wants to keep?

Papers to have in hand before anyone works out the fee

• Every unpaid invoice, with the delivery challan, e-way bill or proof of service behind it
• The purchase orders, contract or rate agreement, or the email where they accepted your price and the interest clause
• Your ledger or statement of account for this customer, signed by whoever heads accounts
• Proof of part payments, any credit notes, and the TDS certificates (Form 16A) for amounts they deducted
• Anything where the customer admits the dues. A balance confirmation, an acknowledgment, even a casual email
• A copy of your legal notice, the postal or courier proof, and their reply if they bothered to send one
• Your MSME (Udyam) registration certificate, if you want MSMED Act interest
• The Section 12A mediation papers, including the non-starter or failure report
• A board resolution or authority letter for whoever signs the plaint and statement of truth
• A certificate under Section 63 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 for emails, WhatsApp chats and records from your accounting software

Mistakes that cost money on court fee

The commonest one is valuing the suit on the legal notice figure and forgetting to bring interest up to the filing date. The second is stuffing vague heads, like damages for loss of reputation, into a plain invoice suit. That raises the fee and hands the defendant a defence. The third is splitting one claim into two suits so each stays under a limit. Order II Rule 2 can then knock out the second suit altogether.

Limitation is a separate trap, and fee planning can hide it. If your oldest invoices are nearly three years old, file first. Argue about the exact fee later. A short-fee objection can be cured. A time-barred claim can't. Our guide on the time limit to recover unpaid dues explains how that clock runs.

When clients fret about the fee, Advocate B.K. Singh usually asks them to see it as a fraction of the claim rather than a lump sum. At under one percent for most commercial claims in Delhi, it's rarely a good reason not to sue. The questions that matter are different. Do your papers prove the debt? Is the claim in time? Does the defendant have anything to pay with?

What to do this week

Pull out the ledger and invoices for this customer and reconcile them, so the principal is one figure you can defend. Work out interest to a likely filing date. Find the date of the oldest unpaid invoice and any written acknowledgment, so you know where you stand on limitation. Then start Section 12A mediation if it applies. Both clocks, fee and court, start only after that.

If you'd like the valuation, the court fee and the right Delhi court checked against your papers before you file, send them to Advocate B.K. Singh's team through the contact page.