An Estonian notary is not a lawyer you hire and not an official you can appeal to. There are 87 of them across 15 notarial districts, they are appointed for life, and the Chamber of Notaries describes the office as neither civil service nor business: an independent profession exercising a function the state has handed over.
That matters for one practical reason above all others. The notary is impartial between the parties, by law. In a property sale they are not the seller's representative and not yours, and the duty they owe is to explain to both sides what follows from the transaction and how each can protect their own interests. Nobody in the room is on your side, and if you want someone who is, that is a separate person you engage separately.
The fee is fixed by statute. The Notary Fees Act sets it, every office in the country charges the same, and a notary is forbidden from agreeing a different figure — so there is nothing to negotiate and nothing to shop around for. Almost every act can now be done over a video bridge without entering the country, including by an e-resident who has never set foot in Estonia.
Table of Contents
What a Notary Does
A notarial act is a state-backed record that a particular document was signed by particular people who understood what they were signing. That is the whole product. The notary verifies identity, reads the instrument back, explains the consequences, and then certifies — and the resulting deed carries evidential weight that a private contract does not.
The Chamber draws a line that decides what you can and cannot negotiate. A notarial act — certifying a transaction, attesting a signature, issuing an apostille — is priced by the Notary Fees Act and the price is not open to discussion. A notarial service, such as drafting a document the notary is not certifying or giving advice outside an act, is not on the statutory scale: the fee is agreed with you, and it has to be agreed before the work starts rather than presented afterwards.
The duty to explain is the part foreign clients most often underuse. The notary is obliged to make the legal position clear and to point out how each party's interests can be protected. An appointment where you hear something for the first time is an appointment that was booked too early.
When a Notary Is Compulsory
Estonia digitised almost everything, and then kept the notary for the transactions where getting it wrong is expensive and irreversible. The list is short and it is not a matter of preference — an agreement in the wrong form is void, not merely unenforceable.
| Transaction | Notary needed? | What actually has to be certified |
|---|---|---|
| Buying or selling property | Yes | Both the purchase-sale contract and the real right contract that transfers ownership |
| Mortgage over property | Yes | The mortgage in the lender's favour, usually at the same appointment |
| Transferring a share in an OÜ | Usually | The disposition itself, unless one of two narrow exemptions applies |
| Shareholder or option agreement | No | Purely obligation-creating arrangements were freed from the notarial form |
| Marital property contract | Yes | The choice of property regime, before or during the marriage |
| Will | Optional | A notarial will, or a spouses' reciprocal will; a home-made will is valid but weaker |
| Inheritance | Yes | Succession proceedings and the certificate of succession |
| Power of attorney for a notarial act | Yes | A power to sell property or transfer a share must itself be notarised |
| Divorce by agreement | Alternative | A notary is one of the two routes — see divorce |
The share transfer is where foreign owners are caught out most often, because the exemption is real but narrow. The notarial form can be dispensed with in exactly two situations: where the shares are registered in the Estonian securities register, or where the articles of association expressly permit transfer without a notary. That second route is conditional, and the conditions are cumulative — at least €10,000 of paid-in share capital, the provision actually written into the articles, and the consent of every shareholder to waive the form.
Most e-resident companies do not qualify for the share-transfer exemption
Since minimum share capital was abolished, a great many companies are formed with a nominal amount and never increase it. A company below €10,000 of paid-in capital cannot use the articles-of-association route however its articles are worded, and the securities-register route needs a securities account, which a foreign-owned company without Estonian banking ties may not be able to open. The practical answer for most owners is that a share sale goes to a notary — which, since it can be done remotely, is less of an obstacle than it sounds.
Note what fell off the list. Since 2020 the obligation-creating half of a share deal — the shareholders' agreement, the option, the promise to sell — no longer needs notarising. It is the disposition that actually moves the share which still does.
How the Fee Is Worked Out
The Notary Fees Act works on transaction value. Each value maps to a full fee, the scale is degressive so the percentage falls as the value rises, and four modifiers then sit on top of it.
Find the transaction value
Normally the price the parties declare. Setting or discharging a mortgage is valued at 2/3 of the mortgage sum rather than the whole of it, and forming a company is valued on the planned share capital.Apply the statutory minimum, if the value is below it
A cheap asset is priced as if it were worth more: €6,391 for a plot or a building, €1,278 for an ideal share of one, €3,800 for a separately privatised apartment, and €6,391 for marital property.Apply the ceiling, if the value is above it
Every act is capped at a transaction value of €6,390,000. Above that the scale simply stops, so a very large deal costs the same in notary fees as one at the ceiling.Double it if the contract is bilateral, then add VAT
A purchase-sale has two sides, so the fee is 2 × the full fee. VAT at 24% is charged on top of the fee tables that are quoted net.
The Chamber's own worked example is the clearest way to see all four at once. On a purchase-sale contract stating €50,000, the statutory table gives a full fee of €83.70. Because a purchase-sale is bilateral the notary fee is 2 × €83.70 = €167.40, with VAT added.
Who pays is a matter for the contract and not for the statute. Estonian practice is to split the notary fee between buyer and seller, but nothing compels it, and the split is one of the terms the notary will read back at the appointment. Agree it when you agree the price.
Two costs sit beside the notary fee on a property purchase and are frequently mistaken for part of it: the state fee for the land register entry, which is a separate scale in the State Fees Act, and the remote-authentication supplement below. Neither is the notary's. Buying property sets out the full cost stack for a purchase.
The Fixed Fees
Not everything is priced on transaction value. The acts a private person needs most often carry a flat fee, and the Chamber publishes these VAT-inclusive.
| Act | Fee, including VAT |
|---|---|
| Attesting a signature or a specimen signature | €15.81 |
| Power of attorney, given by an individual | €31.62 |
| Power of attorney, given by a company | €61.01 |
| Power to collect a pension or maintenance | €3.96 |
| Notarial will | €40.36 |
| Spouses' reciprocal will | €51.46 |
| Opening succession proceedings | €79.24 |
| Issuing the certificate of succession | €126.79 |
| Apostille | €27.71 |
| Certified copy | €3.96 a page, capped at €39.62 |
Two of those repay a second look. A power of attorney costs about the same as a restaurant meal and solves the problem of not being in the country, and the difference between an individual's and a company's is large enough to be worth getting the right one. And the gap between attesting a signature and certifying a transaction is the gap between two entirely different products — attesting a signature says only that this person signed, and says nothing about whether the document does what they think.
The divorce route through a notary is priced separately again, at roughly €80 including VAT for the application, the counselling and the entry, and about €55 where the divorce does not go ahead. Divorce compares that with the vital statistics office and the court.
Remote Notarisation Over the Video Bridge
This is the change that matters most to anyone reading from abroad, and it is the reason an Estonian company can be bought and sold by people who have never met.
Remote authentication runs through the notaries' self-service portal. A video bridge is opened between the notary and the parties, a photograph of each participant is taken and matched against their identity document, the notary displays the deed on screen and reads it back, and the parties sign inside the portal.
Every notarial act can be done this way except contracting and dissolving a marriage. Those two require attendance. Everything else — a property sale, a share transfer, a power of attorney, a will, succession proceedings — is available over the bridge.
Signing is by Estonian ID card, digital ID, Mobile-ID, Smart-ID, a residence permit card, or an e-Resident's digital ID. That last one is the whole point: an e-resident with no Estonian address, no Estonian bank and no travel plans can complete a notarial act that would otherwise require a flight. The supplement is €24 including VAT, on top of the transaction fee.
A notary is not obliged to offer remote authentication
The service is a right of the profession rather than a duty of it, and individual offices differ in how readily they use it and in which languages they will run the appointment. Confirm both when you book rather than after the draft has been prepared — booking is by contacting an office directly or through the self-service portal, and the appointment is confirmable shortly before the scheduled time.
Working With a Notary Without Estonian
The default is Estonian: a notarial deed is drawn up in Estonian. But the Notarisation Act allows the parties to ask for another language, and the notary may draw the deed up in it if their own command of that language is sufficient. In practice a Tallinn office will often work in English or Russian; a small county office may not.
Where the language question actually bites is the translation duty, and it is not optional. If a participant does not have sufficient Estonian — whether they say so themselves or the notary observes it — or if the deed is drawn up in a foreign language, the deed must be translated to that participant. Where a participant demands it, a written translation is prepared and given to them to examine before signing.
What the notary must do
Not a courtesy, a condition of the act:
- Draw the deed up in Estonian, or in another language at the parties' request where their own command of it suffices
- Translate the deed to any participant who does not have sufficient Estonian
- Prepare a written translation where a participant demands one
- Explain the legal consequences to every side, impartially
What falls to you
Decided by the Language Act, not by the office:
- The cost of the interpreter — it falls on the participant who needed the translation
- Checking, before you book, which languages that office will actually work in
- Bringing your own adviser if you want someone whose duty is to you alone
- Reading the draft in advance, when there is still time to change it
The cost allocation is worth planning around on a two-sided deal. If one party needs an interpreter and the other does not, the interpreter is that party's expense — so a foreign buyer facing an Estonian seller pays for the language, on top of their half of the notary fee. It is not a large sum, but it is not shared the way the notary fee usually is.
Apostille, Legalisation and Sworn Translation
Foreign documents do not work in Estonia as they stand, and Estonian documents do not work abroad as they stand. Two separate steps fix that, and they are frequently confused with each other.
The apostille is the single-certificate route between countries that have joined the Hague Convention. Estonian notaries have issued them since 2010 — it is no longer a ministry function — and the fee is €27.71, issued within 5 working days of the application. It goes on public documents: diplomas and certificates, court documents, register extracts and notarial documents, attached either to the original or to a certified copy. Both a paper apostille and a digital one are available, and the digital form can be verified online by whoever receives it.
Legalisation is the older, slower route, and it is what a document needs for a country that has not joined the Convention: confirmation in the issuing country, then confirmation by an Estonian foreign mission or the Foreign Ministry.
A notary can no longer certify a translation
Since 2020 only a sworn translator may produce an official translation, and a notary may certify neither the accuracy of a translation nor a translator's signature. Estonian authorities do accept a translation certified abroad by a foreign notary, sworn translator or equivalent official — but arriving with a translation from an ordinary agency and expecting a notary to stamp it is a wasted appointment, and it is the commonest reason a foreign document has to be sent back.
Some documents need neither step. Public documents from EU member states proving births, deaths, marriages, divorces and similar events are exempt from any formality under the EU public documents regulation, and multilingual standard forms issued alongside them remove the translation requirement as well. Estonia's legal-assistance treaties do the same for documents from Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland or Ukraine. Where a translation is required, it is into Estonian, Russian or English, and it must be an official one.
Inheritance and Powers of Attorney
Succession is the part of notarial work most people meet without warning, and it has one deadline that cannot be recovered.
Proceedings are opened by a notary at the request of a presumed successor, a creditor of the deceased, or anyone else with good reason to establish who inherits. There is no deadline for opening them. The notary establishes the successors and issues a certificate of succession naming each of them and their share as a fraction, and that certificate is what the heirs use to prove the right — to a bank, to the land register, to anyone.
The deadline that does exist runs the other way. A successor who wants to renounce an inheritance has 3 months, counted from when they learn or ought to learn of the death and of their own right to succeed. Renunciation is final: once renounced, an inheritance cannot afterwards be accepted. Estonian succession passes debts as well as assets, which is what makes the deadline consequential rather than administrative.
Powers of attorney are the quiet workhorse. A power to do something that itself requires a notary — sell a property, transfer a share — must itself be notarised. It is one of the cheapest instruments on the fee list, it can be granted remotely, and for an owner abroad it is usually the difference between a transaction happening and a transaction waiting for a flight.
Finding a Notary
The Chamber of Notaries maintains the list of every notary in the country, by district, on its own site. Because the fee is statutory there is no price comparison to make, so the questions worth asking an office before booking are the ones that are not on the tariff.
| Ask before you book | Why it decides the appointment |
|---|---|
| Which languages will you run the act in? | It decides whether you need an interpreter, and therefore what it costs you |
| Will you do this remotely? | No office is obliged to, and finding out late means rebooking |
| What do you need from me in advance? | A draft you see for the first time at the appointment is a draft you cannot properly read |
| Are my foreign documents in usable form? | Apostille and sworn translation take days; discovering the gap at the desk costs a second appointment |
| What is the fee for this specific act? | The figure is not negotiable, but it is knowable in advance, and so is who pays which half |
The Chamber itself sits at Tatari 25 in Tallinn and answers general questions about which acts are available and which office handles what. It does not give legal advice on your transaction, and neither, in the sense you may want, does the notary.
Common Mistakes
The first is treating the notary as your lawyer. Impartiality is the design of the office, not a limitation of it, and a notary who explained the risks to both sides has done the job perfectly even if the deal was bad for you. If a transaction is large or contested, the adviser who acts for you is a separate engagement and a separate fee.
The second is arriving with an ordinary translation. A notary has been unable to certify a translation or a translator's signature since 2020, so a document translated by a general agency will not do — it needs a sworn translator, and that takes days rather than minutes.
The third is assuming an OÜ share can be sold privately because someone read that the rule changed. What changed is that shareholder agreements and options escaped the notarial form. The transfer of the share itself still needs a notary unless the shares are in the securities register or the articles permit otherwise on at least €10,000 of paid-in capital with every shareholder's consent.
The fourth is booking too early. The notary reads the deed back and explains it, but the appointment is not the place to discover what is in it. Ask for the draft in advance, and treat an office that will not send one as a reason to choose another.
The fifth is flying in. Almost every act is available over the video bridge for a €24 supplement, marriage and divorce excepted, and an e-Resident's digital ID is accepted for signing. A flight booked for a share transfer is usually a flight that did not need booking.
The sixth is missing the renunciation window. 3 months, from knowledge rather than from the death, and it cannot be reopened — which matters because an Estonian inheritance carries the debts along with the assets.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does an Estonian notary cost?
It depends on whether the act is priced on transaction value or by a flat fee, and either way the amount is set by the Notary Fees Act and is identical at every office. On the Chamber's own example, a purchase-sale contract stating €50,000 carries a full fee of €83.70, doubled to €167.40 because the contract is bilateral, plus VAT. Flat-fee acts are much smaller: €15.81 to attest a signature, €31.62 for an individual's power of attorney, €40.36 for a notarial will, all including VAT. A notary is forbidden from agreeing a different figure, so there is nothing to negotiate.
Can I do a notarial act in Estonia without going there?
Yes, for every act except contracting and dissolving a marriage. Remote authentication runs over a video bridge in the notaries' self-service portal: a photograph of each participant is taken and matched to their identity document, the notary displays and reads back the deed, and the parties sign inside the portal. Signing is by Estonian ID card, digital ID, Mobile-ID, Smart-ID, a residence permit card or an e-Resident's digital ID. The supplement is €24 including VAT. One caveat: no notary is obliged to offer the service, so confirm the office will before the draft is prepared.
Do I need a notary to sell my shares in an Estonian OÜ?
Usually yes. There are two exemptions and both are narrow. The first is where the shares are registered in the Estonian securities register, which needs a securities account. The second is where the articles of association expressly permit transfer without a notary — and that requires at least €10,000 of paid-in share capital and the consent of every shareholder. Most companies formed with nominal capital meet neither. What did change is that shareholders' agreements and option agreements no longer need notarising; the disposition that moves the share still does.
What language will the notary work in?
The deed is drawn up in Estonian by default. The parties may ask for another language and the notary may use it where their own command of it is sufficient, which in Tallinn commonly means English or Russian and in a small county office may mean neither. Where a participant does not have sufficient Estonian, or where the deed is in a foreign language, the deed must be translated to them, and a written translation is prepared if a participant demands one. Ask which languages an office works in before you book.
Who pays for the interpreter?
The participant who needed the translation. That allocation comes from the Language Act rather than from the office, and it is not shared the way the notary fee usually is — so on a two-sided deal where only one party needs an interpreter, that party carries the whole cost on top of their share of the fee.
How much is an apostille in Estonia and who issues it?
Notaries issue apostilles, and have since 2010. The fee is €27.71 and it is issued within 5 working days of the application. It can go on the original document or on a certified copy, and both a paper and a digital apostille are available, the digital one verifiable online by whoever receives it.
Can a notary certify my translation?
No, not since 2020. Only a sworn translator may produce an official translation, and a notary may certify neither the accuracy of a translation nor a translator's signature. A translation certified abroad by a foreign notary, sworn translator or equivalent official is accepted in Estonia. Bringing an agency translation to a notary for a stamp is the commonest wasted appointment.
Do my foreign documents need an apostille to be used in Estonia?
Often, but not always. A public document from a country in the Hague Convention needs an apostille from that country. A document from a country outside it needs legalisation instead. Several categories need neither: EU public documents proving births, deaths, marriages and divorces are exempt under the EU public documents regulation, multilingual standard forms remove the translation requirement too, and Estonia's legal-assistance treaties exempt documents from Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland or Ukraine. Where a translation is needed it must be an official one, into Estonian, Russian or English.
Is the notary acting for me?
No. The notary is impartial between the parties by law, and the duty is to explain to both sides what legal consequences and risks follow and how each can protect their own interests. That is the design of the office rather than a shortcoming of it. If you want someone whose duty runs to you alone, that is a separate adviser, separately engaged and separately paid.
How long do I have to renounce an inheritance?
3 months, running from the moment the successor learns or ought to learn of the death and of their own right to succeed — not from the date of death itself. Renunciation is irreversible: once made, the inheritance cannot afterwards be accepted. The deadline matters because an Estonian inheritance carries the deceased's debts as well as their assets, so the decision is sometimes a real one rather than a formality.
Can somebody else sign for me at the notary?
Yes, on a notarised power of attorney. A power to do something that itself requires a notary — selling property, transferring a share — must itself be in notarial form. It costs €31.62 including VAT from an individual and €61.01 from a company, and it can be granted remotely, which for an owner abroad is often faster than arranging the transaction itself remotely.
Are notary fees different in Tallinn and in a small town?
No. The Notary Fees Act fixes the fee for every notarial act and a notary is prohibited from agreeing to alter the statutory rates, so the same act costs the same at any of the 87 offices across the 15 districts. The one thing that is negotiable is a notarial service — drafting work or advice outside a certified act — and there the fee must be agreed with you before the work starts. Choose an office on language, availability and whether it will work remotely, because price is not a variable.