AbstractIn this paper we introduce and investigate the regularity properties of one-sided multilinear fractional maximal operators, both in continuous case and in discrete case. In the continuous setting, we prove that the one-sided multilinear fractional maximal operators$\mathfrak{M}_\beta^{+}\; \text{and}\, \mathfrak{M}_\beta^{-}$map W1,p1 (ℝ)×· · ·×W1,pm (ℝ) into W1,q(ℝ) with 1 < p1, … , pm < ∞, 1 ≤ q < ∞ and $1/q= \sum_{i=1}^m1/p_i-\beta$, boundedly and continuously. In the discrete setting, we show that the discrete one-sided multilinear fractional maximal operators are bounded and continuous from ℓ1(ℤ)×· · ·×ℓ1(ℤ) to BV(ℤ). Here BV(ℤ) denotes the set of functions of bounded variation defined on ℤ. Our main results represent significant and natural extensions of what was known previously.