The purpose of this study is to investigate the inelastic behavior and ductility capacity of reinforced concrete frame subjected to cyclic lateral load and to provide result for developing improved seismic design criteria. A computer program named RCAHEST(Reinforced Concrete Analysis in Higher Evaluation System Technology) for the analysis of reinforced concrete structures was used. Material nonlinearity is taken into account by comprising tensile, compressive and shear models of cracked concrete and a model of reinforcing steel. The smeared crack approach is incorporated. The strength increase of concrete due to the lateral confining reinforcement has been taken into account to model the confined concrete. In boundary plane at which each member with different thickness is connected local discontinuous deformation due to the abrupt change in their stiffness can be taken into account by introducing interface element. The effect of number of load reversals with the same displacement amplitude has been also taken into account to model the reinforcing steel. The proposed numerical method for the inelastic behavior and ductility capacity of reinforced concrete frame subjected to cyclic lateral load is verified by comparison with reliable experimental results.