Tallinn is where two-thirds of foreigners moving to Estonia end up, and the reasons are not subtle: it holds a third of the country's people, its county produces 63% of national GDP, and it is the only Estonian city with an international airport worth the name. It is also the most expensive place in the country, and the only one where public transport is free.
Table of Contents
About Tallinn
The population figure needs a caveat that applies to every city on this site. Estonia has two official counts and they disagree. The Population Register counts registered addresses; Statistics Estonia uses a residency-index method and produces higher numbers. We use the Register throughout, because "who is officially resident here" is the question a mover is actually asking — and because registering is something you must do within 14 days anyway.
On that count Tallinn grew sharply in 2022–23 as Ukrainians arrived (+13,374 in one year), plateaued, and fell for the first time in 2026, by 1,018. That mirrors the country: Estonia's population fell for a second consecutive year to 1,360,745, with net migration negative for the first time in over a decade.
Cost of Living
Tallinn is the most expensive Estonian city on every measure that is officially published, and the gap is widest in housing.
| Tallinn | Tartu | Pärnu | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apartments, secondary market | €2,971.00/m² | €2,400.00/m² | €1,988.00/m² |
| New build | €4,583.00/m² | €4,338.00/m² | €3,815.00/m² |
| Typical two-room flat | €136,326 | €112,856 | €94,551 |
| District heating | €77.82/MWh | €62.41/MWh | €68.76/MWh |
| Water and sewerage | €2.87/m³ | €3.10/m³ | €3.84/m³ |
Tallinn's secondary-market square metre is 49% above Pärnu's and 24% above Tartu's. Heating and water, by contrast, are unremarkable — Tallinn sits in the middle of the four on both.
There is no official rent figure for Tallinn — or anywhere in Estonia
The purchase prices above are real, from the Land and Spatial Development Board's quarterly review. Rent is not published by anyone. The land board records transactions, not tenancies; Statistics Estonia publishes indices, not levels. Every Tallinn rent figure in circulation is portal or crowd-sourced data. See cost of living for why no single figure is printed.
Neighbourhoods
Tallinn has eight districts: Haabersti, Kesklinn, Kristiine, Lasnamäe, Mustamäe, Nõmme, Pirita and Põhja-Tallinn. The city's own heritage register describes the character of the older pockets within them, and those descriptions are quoted below because they are the only official ones that exist.
| Area | District | The city's own description |
|---|---|---|
| Kalamaja | Põhja-Tallinn | "Tallinn's oldest suburb" — centuries of wooden fishermen's housing |
| Kadriorg | Kesklinn | "Unique history and character", well-preserved 18th–20th century architecture |
| Nõmme | Nõmme | The "forest city" — Tsarist summer villas and interwar houses |
| Pelgulinn | Põhja-Tallinn | Railway-era development and 1920s cooperative housing |
| Uus Maailm | Kesklinn | An 1890s-onward suburban workers' district |
| Merivälja | Pirita | A 1924 garden city on an American-style grid |
What follows is description, not a sourced fact
Lasnamäe, Mustamäe and Väike-Õismäe are the big Soviet-era panel-block districts, and they are where the cheapest housing and most of the non-Estonian-speaking population are. Pirita is coastal, low-density and expensive. This is widely repeated and none of it traces to an official document — none of those three districts appears in the city's heritage register, only the pre-Soviet pockets inside them. Treat it as orientation, then go and look.
Job Market
The case for Tallinn
Sourced:
- Harju county: 63% of national GDP, GDP per capita 34% above the national average
- Average gross wage in the city €2,538, against €2,135 nationally
- Median in Harju county €1,958 — the highest of the four counties
- ICT roles are outside the immigration quota
What the state actually publishes
And what it does not:
- Invest in Estonia names electronics, electrical equipment, metals, food, energy and logistics for Harju
- It does not quantify ICT employment by city — so nobody can tell you how big Tallinn tech really is
- Registered unemployment for Harju is not in the monthly release; Northern Estonia ran 7.4% in the 2025 labour force survey
The wage gap is the number to carry: the median in Harju is €1,958 against €1,407 in Ida-Viru — a 28% difference inside a country you can drive across in three hours. Use the salary calculator to see what any of it means after tax.
Getting Around
Free, and the reason to register on day one
Public transport is free for anyone with a registered Tallinn address, with a personalised Ühiskaart and ID. Also free: pre-school children, under-19s resident in Estonia, over-65s, and disabled people with a companion. Visitors pay €2.00 for an hour, €5.50 for 24 hours, €9.00 for 72 hours or €30.00 for 30 days. Drivers do not sell tickets and cash is not accepted on board.
Why you may have seen €48–€90 quoted
Because that is a different product. The city's mobility pages also list the Põhja-Eesti regional ticket — 30 days, €48.00 to €90.00 depending on how many zones you cross — which covers Tallinn plus Harju county. The city ticket is €30.00. We chased this discrepancy specifically because three different figures circulate, and that regional product is where the high ones come from.
Trains (Elron): about ten direct services a day to Tartu, fastest around 2 h 38 min; roughly five a day to Narva, 3 h 15 min to 3 h 40 min. There is no rail to Pärnu at all. One caution: those Tartu times are slower than the route's historic best and Elron was running short-validity timetables and publishing engineering works through 2026, so read them as "as timetabled in August 2026".
Flying: Lennart Meri Tallinn Airport is the only Estonian airport with a real route map — airBaltic alone listed 25 direct destinations for summer 2026, and seven new routes launched during the year, including Warsaw, Rome, Düsseldorf, Leeds and London Gatwick.
Expat Life
Tallinn is the easiest landing in Estonia if you speak English and not Estonian. 81% of the city speaks at least one foreign language, and English overtook Russian as Estonia's most widely spoken foreign language between the 2011 and 2021 censuses.
| Service | Where | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| International House of Estonia | Tallinn | The state's newcomer service, run through Work in Estonia |
| Integration Foundation | Rävala 5 | Settle in Estonia adaptation programme, language courses |
| Estonian Language House | Tallinn and Narva | Free courses — see the language page |
Worth knowing before you compare cities: Tartu's welcome centre can actually perform registrations, including the personal ID code, and Tallinn's cannot. If paperwork is your main worry, that is a genuine point against the capital.
Climate & Winters
Monthly mean temperature, Tallinn-Harku station, 1991–2020 normals, from the Estonian Weather Service:
February is colder than January
At every Estonian station in the 1991–2020 normals, and it contradicts what most people expect. Tallinn's February mean is −3.6 °C against January's −2.9 °C, and the February mean minimum is −6.2 °C. The other number that matters is daylight: 5 h 48 min at midwinter against 18 h 42 min at midsummer. The dark, not the cold, is what people find hard.
Annual mean 6.4 °C, precipitation 700 mm, sunshine 1,923 hours a year — second only to Pärnu among the stations that publish it.
Practical Information
| Detail | |
|---|---|
| Register your address | Within 14 days, and it is what makes transport free and decides school priority. See renting. |
| Bank account | Proof of a connection to Estonia, in person, up to 10 business days. See bank accounts. |
| Health cover | Starts 14 days after your employer registers you. See health insurance. |
| Language | B1 for permanent residence and citizenship; free state courses have a Language House here. See the language page. |
| Heating | €77.82/MWh excluding VAT, Competition Authority approved. Ask for a January bill before you sign a lease. |