In this paper, the reactive resources placement including capacitor bank in radial distribution network is studied. The placement purpose is to reduce the cost of power loss, the cost of capacitor purchase and installation. The location and size of the capacitors in the distribution network are determined using the intelligent ant lion optimizer (ALO) method, which is inspired by the hunting behavior of the ant lions. Based on the power loss sensitivity factor (LSF), candidate buses are selected for capacitor installation using the ALO. The proposed method is implemented ona 33-bus radial distribution networks. In this study, the effect of loading changes on the placement problem and distribution network characteristics including power losses, minimum voltage, voltage profile and net savings are evaluated. The results show that after optimal capacitor placement the characteristics of the distribution network includes active and reactive power loss are significantly reduced and also the network voltage profile is improved compared to former capacitor placement. The performance of the proposed method is compared to particle swarm optimization (PSO), teaching-learning based optimization (TLBO) and previous studies, which showed the superiority of the proposed method in achieving lower cost and greater net saving. تفاصيل المقالة