Fractional order direct power control (FO-DPC) has been proposed in this paper, this command applied to active power filters (APFs) with fractional PI regulator to control DC-bus voltage of the capacitor, this active configuration of APF allows us to control the active and reactive power and compensate the harmonics of current. The static and dynamic behavior of DPC and FO-DPC are presented to prove the performance of the proposed system. All results obtained are compared to standard direct power control (DPC) strategies. The FO-DPC proves the high level of power quality and could become an interesting alternative of standard DPC techniques for APFs.