If your company's registered address is outside Estonia, you must appoint a contact person here. It is the one line item a non-resident founder pays for as long as the company exists, it is bought from a private provider, and almost every guide describes it as half of a bundle rather than as the legal requirement it actually is.
A contact person is required only if your address is abroad, and it is an alternative to an Estonian address rather than an addition to one. Either the company has a legal address in Estonia, or it uses your own address abroad and appoints a licensed contact person here. Most non-resident founders buy both from one provider, which is why the two are sold together and mistaken for a single requirement.
It must be a licensed company or a notary — not a friend in Tallinn. Their legal role is narrow: they receive official notices for the company and have no authority to act for it. Expect €200–€400 a year, which is e-Residency's own published estimate.
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When You Need One
The trigger is the company's registered address, not your own nationality or where you live.
In Estonia
- No contact person is required
- Official post arrives at that address
- Usually bought as a virtual office from a service provider
If you already have a genuine Estonian address, you are not required to buy a contact person as well.
or Outside Estonia
- A licensed contact person in Estonia is required
- They receive official notices on the company's behalf
- The register will not complete the entry without one
This is the case almost every e-resident founder is in.
Two situations, not two products. Which one you are in is decided by the address on the register entry — not by your nationality, and not by where you live.
The Centre of Registers puts it in one line on the establishment page: if the address of the private limited company is in a foreign country, a contact person must also be added.
Almost every guide gets this slightly wrong. They present "legal address and contact person" as a single mandatory purchase. It is genuinely either/or in law — e-Residency's own knowledge base says you need either an Estonian legal address, or your domestic address plus a licensed contact person. The reason the bundle exists is commercial rather than legal: most providers sell the Estonian address and the contact person together, and most founders want the address anyway so their post does not go to their kitchen table. Knowing it is a choice matters when you already have a real Estonian address — through an employer, a co-working contract or a genuine office — because then you are buying something you do not need.
Who May Act as One
Not anyone you know. e-Residency states the requirement plainly: for companies with a foreign management board address, you must use a licensed company or a notary to provide a local contact person.
That rules out the arrangement people reach for first — a friend, a relative, or an employee living in Tallinn. It is not a question of trust; the role is licensed.
This is where the recurring cost is unavoidable. Because the role is restricted to licensed providers and notaries, there is no free version and no way to do it yourself. It is the one cost of an Estonian company that cannot be optimised away by doing more of the work personally — unlike accounting, which you can genuinely take on yourself.
What They Actually Do
Much less than the name suggests, and the limit is the reassuring part.
| Contact person | |
|---|---|
| Receives official notices for the company | Yes — this is the whole role |
| Can sign for the company | No |
| Can act on the company's behalf | No — e-Residency states they do not need rights to act for you |
| Is a director or board member | No |
| Has access to your bank account | No |
| Is liable for the company's obligations | No |
e-Residency describes the function as acting as a messenger for your company for local authorities. Post from the Tax and Customs Board, the register or a court reaches the contact person, who forwards it to you. That is it.
The practical consequence is worth stating: you remain responsible for everything. A notice delivered to your contact person is delivered to the company. If they forward it and you ignore it, that is your problem, not theirs — and the deadline has already started running.
The Expiry Nobody Warns You About
The appointment has an end date, and the register deletes it automatically
The contact person is entered in the register with a term, and the register's own Estonian documentation is explicit: when the term passes, the contact person's details are deleted automatically. Nothing asks you to confirm. Nobody chases you.
This is the failure mode specific to this requirement. Everything else about running an Estonian company produces a reminder — the annual report has a deadline you can look up, VAT returns arrive monthly, your provider invoices you. The contact person entry simply lapses, and a company whose address is abroad and whose contact person has expired is not compliant.
Find out your end date
It is in the register entry, not in your provider's invoice. Look it up rather than assuming it matches your billing cycle — they are set independently and need not align.Diarise it separately from the invoice
Paying the renewal and the register entry being extended are two different events. A provider that has been paid has an incentive to file, but the register does not know that you paid.Check the entry after renewal
The e-Business Register shows the current contact person and their term. Confirming takes a minute and is the only way to know the filing actually happened.
What It Costs
€200–€400 a year is the state's own figure: e-Residency's knowledge base says the service "can be obtained from a virtual office service provider and is, on average, €200-400 per year". It is a useful number precisely because it is the government's estimate of a private market it does not price itself.
Of the providers that publish a price list, one sells the address-and-contact-person bundle on its own at €290 a year, which sits inside that range. Providers bundling accounting do not price the contact person separately at all, so you cannot see what portion of a €89–99 monthly subscription is buying this.
Compare it against the thing people do budget for. Registering the company is €265, once. The contact person and address bundle at €290 a year exceeds the entire state cost of forming the company inside the first twelve months, and then does it again every year after. Founders budget the €265 and are surprised by this. See what an Estonian company actually costs for the full annual arithmetic.
Common Mistakes
The commonest mistake is assuming you need both. An Estonian legal address and a contact person are alternatives, so if you already have a genuine Estonian address, you are not required to buy a contact person as well. The next is asking a friend in Tallinn: the role is restricted to licensed companies and notaries, and a willing acquaintance cannot lawfully be appointed. The third is expecting them to handle things. They forward official post. They cannot sign, act or deal with anything on the company's behalf, and a notice delivered to them is delivered to you.
The register entry is where the expensive mistake sits. It carries its own end date and is deleted automatically when that date passes, so paying your provider and the entry being extended are different events. Budgeting the cost as a setup expense is the related error: it recurs for the life of the company and exceeds the one-off €265 state fee within the first year.
Finally, appointing a contact person does not make you tax resident in Estonia. It is a postal arrangement, and neither it nor an Estonian legal address changes where you are taxed personally.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need a contact person for my Estonian company?
Only if the company's registered address is outside Estonia. The Centre of Registers states that where the address of the private limited company is in a foreign country, a contact person must also be added. If you have an Estonian legal address, you do not need one — they are alternatives rather than a pair.
Who can be my contact person in Estonia?
A licensed company or a notary. e-Residency states that for companies with a foreign management board address it is required to use a licensed company or notary to provide a local contact person. A friend, relative or employee living in Estonia cannot lawfully fill the role.
What does a contact person actually do?
They receive official notices for the company and forward them to you — e-Residency describes the role as acting as a messenger for your company for local authorities. They cannot sign for the company, act on its behalf, or take decisions, and e-Residency states explicitly that they do not need to be granted rights to act for you. You remain responsible for everything, and a notice delivered to them is delivered to the company.
How much does a contact person cost in Estonia?
e-Residency's own estimate is €200–400 a year from a virtual office service provider. Of the published price lists, one sells the address and contact person bundled at €290 a year. Providers that bundle accounting do not price the contact person separately, so its share of their monthly fee is not visible.
Does the contact person appointment expire?
Yes, and this is the part that catches people. The contact person is entered in the register with a term, and the register's own documentation states that when the term passes the details are deleted automatically. Nothing prompts you and nobody chases you, so diarise the register's end date separately from your provider's invoice.
Can I be my own contact person if I live abroad?
No. The point of the requirement is a licensed presence in Estonia for a company whose management board address is abroad, so the person filling it cannot be you. If you move to Estonia and the company has an Estonian address, the requirement falls away instead.
Does having a contact person make me an Estonian tax resident?
No. A contact person is a postal arrangement and does not affect where you or the company are taxed. Personal tax residence depends on your own circumstances and is decided by the rules of the country you live in as much as by Estonia's — it needs local advice rather than an answer from a guide.
What happens if the entry lapses without my noticing?
The register deletes the contact person's details automatically when the term passes, and nothing asks you to confirm it first. A company whose registered address is abroad and whose contact person has expired is not compliant, and that is the position you are in from the moment the entry goes. What the register does next is not published: neither a fine figure nor a timetable for the consequence appears anywhere in the register's own material. Treat the end date as something to manage rather than something you will be warned about. It lives in the register entry, not on your provider's invoice — the two are set independently and need not align — so look it up, diarise it separately, and check the entry again after any renewal, because paying the provider and the filing actually happening are different events.
Can I move my contact person to a different provider?
Yes. The company is yours and the provider is a service around it, so switching is ordinary. Two things to handle. The register entry has to be updated as part of the move, which is a filing rather than a consequence of you cancelling one subscription and starting another — confirm the new entry and its end date in the e-Business Register afterwards rather than assuming it happened. And check the minimum term before you commit: at least one provider applies a three-month commitment that also catches people switching in from a competitor. Price the address and contact person as a standalone line where the provider publishes one — €290 a year is what one of them charges for the bundle — because providers that fold it into a monthly accounting subscription do not show what portion of the fee it is.
Will they forward my ordinary business post as well?
Not as part of this role. The contact person receives official notices — from the Tax and Customs Board, the register or a court — and forwards them to you, and e-Residency describes the function as acting as a messenger for your company for local authorities. Anything else arriving on paper, a client's letter or a supplier's invoice, belongs to the legal address service rather than to the contact person, and it is sold and capped accordingly: one provider's €290 a year address-and-contact-person bundle names mail forwarding of up to ten letters a month. If paper post from anyone other than the authorities matters to your business, check the forwarding volume in the bundle rather than assuming the statutory role covers it.
Related Guides
Disclaimer
General guidance, not legal advice. The requirement turns on your company's registered address and your board's residence; confirm your own position with the Centre of Registers or a licensed provider. Nothing on this page changes your personal tax residence, which depends on where you actually live.