© 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature India Private Limited.In this work, the residual power series method (RPSM) is utilized for solving the time fractional Kawahara equation. Here, the fractional derivatives are defined in Caputo sense. The solutions of this equation are computed as a rapid convergent series with simply calculable components by using Mathematica 11.3. The reliability of the suggested method is also demonstrated with the help of series solutions and graphical results. These results are illustrated that RPSM is a powerful and useful method for determining the solutions of time fractional Kawahara equation. Besides, this method provides good correctness for approximate solutions when compare with exact solutions.