Integral performance indices as quantitative measures of the performance of a system are commonly used to evaluate the performance of designed control systems. In this paper, it is pointed out that due to existence of non-exponential modes in the step response of a fractional-order control system having zero steady state error, integral performance indices of such a system may be infinite. According to this point, some simple conditions are derived to guarantee the finiteness of different integral performance indices in a class of fractional-order control systems. Finally, some numerical examples are presented to show the applicability of the analytical achievements of the paper. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.