Elevators are devices that demand a high safety requirement. The elevator faults affect not only the operations of other assets but may also result in serious injuries or even death. Consequently, an elevator frequently requires the effective and appropriate maintenance strategy to sustain its functional operations. In this study, risk-based inspection, which is a technique for systematic decision-making to identify likely failed components and its consequences, is proposed for elevator maintenance due to a trade-off between economics and safety. The proposed technique is evaluated by using Korean disaster and failure statistic data. The results indicate that the proposed method offers an effective technique for elevator maintenance.