Utilities in Estonia

How the electricity market works

Estonia's electricity market has been open to every household for more than a decade, and Elering, the state transmission operator, is the authority on how it functions. Two contracts sit behind one meter. The first is the network contract (võrguleping) with the distribution operator that owns the wires in your area, which for 95% of the country's distribution network is Elektrilevi. The second is the electricity contract (elektrileping) with a seller of your choice. The network operator carries electricity to you and reads the meter; the seller buys the energy on the market and bills you for it. You cannot choose your network operator. You can choose your seller freely, and switching is free.

Sellers offer five kinds of package, and Elering names them. A pure exchange-price package (börsihind) charges you the Nord Pool day-ahead price for each pricing interval plus the seller's margin. A monthly-average package charges the average exchange price for the month. A fixed-price package locks a price per kilowatt-hour for a term, typically six months to three years. A hybrid splits your consumption between fixed and exchange. A green package adds a certificate of renewable origin. On the exchange, the price for each interval is set where the supply and demand curves that all the market participants submitted for the next day cross; since October 2025 that happens in quarter-hour intervals rather than hourly, and where a meter cannot yet be read every quarter-hour, the hourly reading is split into four equal parts.

There is also the general service (üldteenus), and it is worth understanding because it is what you are on by default. If a small consumer, meaning a connection point up to a modest amperage, has a valid network contract but no electricity contract, the network operator must still supply electricity, and it does so at a price the Electricity Market Act regulates: the exchange price plus a margin and the network operator's justified costs. For Elektrilevi customers that general service is provided by Enefit, and Enefit's own consumer-education site describes it plainly as the most expensive way to buy electricity. You land on it when you move into a flat, sign the network contract and forget the second contract; the remedy is to sign a package with any seller.

The universal service (universaalteenus) was something different, and it has ended. From October 2022 households could opt for a regulated price that the Competition Authority set on the basis of a confirmed production cost. Parliament's own summary of the reform gives its life as 1 October 2022 to 30 April 2026. If a landlord, a colleague or an older forum post tells you to "take the universal service", that option no longer exists for a household; what remains is a free choice between sellers, and the general service as a default you should leave as soon as you notice you are on it.

Switching seller costs nothing and never interrupts supply. Elering's rules require at least 14 days' notice for a switch through the Estfeed data hub, a new contract can start at midnight on any calendar day, and signing with a new seller automatically ends the contract with the old one. The thing to check before switching is your existing contract: a fixed-price package with a term may carry an early-termination charge, which is the seller's condition rather than the market's, and it is written in the contract you signed.

Who sells electricity and what they charge

Elektrilevi keeps the list of sellers that hold a valid open-supplier contract with it, and that list is the answer to "who actually sells to households today". It includes Enefit (formerly trading as Eesti Energia), Alexela and Alexela Energia Teenused, Elenger Grupp (the former Eesti Gaas), Elektrum Eesti, Ignitis Eesti, Olerex Energia, Silpower, Sunly Retail, Viru Elektrivõrgud, VKG Energia and Volton, among others. The brand 220 Energia is gone: Alexela's own notice records that 220 Energia OÜ was merged into AS Alexela on 11 June 2024 and the old website now redirects to Alexela. Eesti Energia the retail brand is also gone; the seller on the list is Enefit OÜ, and the price pages live at enefit.ee.

The three cards below cover the sellers whose public price pages carry a dated household tariff or, in Enefit's case, the package structure: Enefit shows its prices only inside its self-service, so its card carries no per-kilowatt-hour figure. Elektrum Eesti, VKG Energia, Ignitis and the others on Elektrilevi's list are equally valid choices; their offers live in their own portals, and the bill structure in the next section applies to every one of them.

Whichever seller you pick, the meter, the network fee and the levies are identical. The only things that differ are the energy price per kilowatt-hour, the seller's monthly fee, and the term. That is why the next section matters more than the cards.

What a kilowatt-hour really costs

Elering lists the parts of a household electricity bill: the energy, the network charge (võrgutasu), electricity excise (elektriaktsiis), the renewable-energy charge (taastuvenergia tasu), and VAT on the lot. From 2026 there are two more lines, both collected through Elektrilevi on behalf of Elering: a balancing-capacity cost and a security-of-supply charge. Elering's own estimate is that the two new items together add about €3 to €4 a month to an average household.

The network charge is the biggest fixed part. Elektrilevi's price list in force from 1 June 2026 was approved by the Competition Authority on 2 March 2026, and for the standard apartment package, Võrk 1, it is €3.48 a month plus 9.57 cents per kilowatt-hour transmitted, both with VAT. Elektrilevi announced the new list as an average rise of 3.4% over the list that ran from August 2025 to the end of May 2026, driven by the cost of buying transmission from Elering and by inflation, and put the monthly-fee increase at €0.69 for an apartment and €1.26 for a house on a larger main fuse. Houses and larger flats sit on other network packages with their own monthly fee and transmission rates, and you may change package, but changing again inside 365 days costs €4.96.

The levies are small individually and add up. The renewable-energy charge for 2026 is 0.84 cents per kilowatt-hour before VAT, unchanged from 2025. The security-of-supply charge, new from 1 January 2026, is €7.58 per megawatt-hour before VAT, which Elering translates as about €2.35 a month for a household using 250 kilowatt-hours. The balancing-capacity charge, also new from January 2026 and first seen on February bills, is €3.73 per megawatt-hour, which ERR reported as about €1.20 a month for the same household. Electricity excise rose to €3.07 per megawatt-hour on 1 May 2026. VAT is 24% on the whole bill, including the network fee and the levies.

The energy component is the part that swings. Enefit publishes the monthly average exchange price for Estonia with VAT, and 2026 shows the range: 19.15 cents in January, 19.17 in February, then 7.99 in June and 5.46 in July. A household on an exchange package paid about three and a half times more per kilowatt-hour for energy in January than in July, before adding the parts that do not move. A fixed package smooths that; it also means paying the fixed price through a summer when the exchange was far below it.

Put the per-kilowatt-hour lines together for July 2026 and an exchange household on Elenger's margin paid roughly 17.7 cents per kilowatt-hour before the excise and balancing lines and before either monthly fee, of which the energy itself was only 5.46 cents. The regulated part of a kilowatt-hour was bigger than the market part all summer. In January the same sum was about 31.4 cents, and the energy was the majority. That is the whole exchange-versus-fixed question in two numbers.

District heating and the winter bill

Most apartment buildings in Tallinn, Tartu, Pärnu and Narva are heated from a district network (kaugküte), and the heat price is not a market price: the heat company applies to the Competition Authority, which approves a maximum price per megawatt-hour. The tariffs below are the ones the companies publish on their own price pages, and the same authority approved every one of them.

Utilitas, which heats Tallinn and Maardu, publishes a ceiling of €77.82 per megawatt-hour before VAT, and its smaller networks range from €59.32 in Valga to €71.97 in Haapsalu and €75.17 in Keila. Gren, which heats Tartu and Pärnu, publishes €65.39 for Tartu from 1 October 2026, after a step from €58.97 to €64.69 in May 2025 that it explained by fuel and network costs, and €68.76 for Pärnu. Narva is the outlier at €137.69. Add 24% VAT to each.

Why does the winter bill surprise people who read those tariffs? Because you do not buy heat by the megawatt-hour on your own meter. Gren's customer questions explain the mechanics, and Utilitas's contract page confirms them: the heat company's meter sits in the building's substation, the company bills the building each month for the megawatt-hours that passed through it, and the building's owner or apartment association (korteriühistu) divides that among the flats by the key the co-owners have agreed. The apartment association also sets the price of hot water where it is made in the building's own heat exchanger. Your line for heat in January is therefore your share of the whole building's January consumption at the regulated tariff, and a badly insulated building with an old substation costs its tenants more per square metre than a renovated one at exactly the same tariff. There is no summer-to-winter smoothing unless the association has chosen to bill a flat monthly average, which some do and many do not.

Heating in a house is a different question: a private house on gas, a heat pump or a wood boiler buys fuel or electricity at the prices on this page and has no association in between. A heat pump moves the whole heating cost onto the electricity bill, where the winter exchange prices above land in full.

Gas, water and waste

Gas reaches a minority of homes, mostly older Tallinn flats with a gas hob and houses with a gas boiler. The structure mirrors electricity: a network contract with the gas distributor, and a supply contract with a seller. Gaasivõrk, the distribution operator, publishes a household network tariff from 1 September 2026 of €7.32 a month plus 0.8955 cents per kilowatt-hour, both with VAT; the network contract itself is free and is concluded by sending the form to the operator. The main seller is Elenger, the company that was Eesti Gaas until it renamed itself, and its flexible household package is priced month by month and published a month in advance: €0.54 per cubic metre with VAT in January 2026, €0.80 in May, €0.84 in September and €0.96 for October, plus a monthly fee of €2.02. Gas excise rose to €66.58 per thousand cubic metres on 1 May 2026. A flat that only cooks on gas will find the two monthly fees larger than the gas.

Water and sewerage come from one company per town, and the tariff is approved by the Competition Authority the same way heat is. Tallinna Vesi's price list from 1 July 2026 charges Tallinn and Saue households €1.48 per cubic metre for water and €1.39 for sewerage, €2.87 together with VAT, from a pre-VAT total of €2.31; the city's notice put the change at an average of 2.5% and gave Maardu's pre-VAT figure as €3.42. Tartu Veevärk's list from 1 February 2026 is €1.34 for water and €1.76 for sewerage, €3.10 together with VAT. In an apartment building the water company meters the building and the association divides the bill by the flat meters, and it is the association, not you, that has the contract with the water company; in a house you contract directly.

Household waste is organised by the municipality. Tallinn's rules explain that the city is divided into collection zones, each with a carrier that won the tender for that zone, and that you cannot choose another. An apartment building's association holds the contract and sets the container schedule; a house owner contracts with the assigned carrier directly. Separate collection of biowaste has been compulsory since June 2023, packaging goes to the separate packaging containers that fall outside the paid scheme, and the price per emptying depends on the container size and frequency in the carrier's contract for your zone, which the association or the carrier can show you.

Tenant, landlord and the newcomer's checklist

The default rule in the Law of Obligations Act is that a tenant owes rent, and owes the ancillary costs (kõrvalkulud) only where the lease says so. Nearly every Estonian lease does say so, and the usual split is that the tenant pays the consumption-based utilities and the landlord keeps the owner's costs. The apartment association's monthly invoice lists both kinds on one sheet, which is why the split has to be written down.

Repair fund and association loan repayments are the lines people fight over. A lease clause that shifts them onto the tenant is void under the same Act, because they are not costs of using the flat but of owning it; a landlord may of course set the rent higher to cover them. If the association invoice simply arrives at the flat and you are asked to pay it in full, ask which lines are yours.

The other thing a newcomer needs is the order of operations, which Enefit's moving guide and Elektrilevi's contract page set out. The network contract comes first, and it does not have to be in the owner's name: Elektrilevi will sign it with any person who consumes electricity at that address, through its self-service, for free. The electricity contract is signed second, with a start date matching the network contract. If a previous occupant has ended the network contract and nobody signs a new one within 30 days, Elektrilevi switches the meter off and reconnection is a paid service. Ending the network contract later ends the electricity contract with it.

Both contracts are signed online with an Estonian ID card, Mobile-ID or Smart-ID, which is why the personal code is the first step; until you have one, the usual arrangement is that the landlord keeps both contracts in his own name and passes the bills on, and the lease should say so. Bills come by e-mail or as an e-invoice to your Estonian bank, where a standing order can pay them on the due date. The personal code and bank account pages cover those two steps.

The mistakes that cost newcomers money are predictable. The first is staying on the general service for months because the network contract was signed and the second contract never was; the fix takes ten minutes online with any seller. The second is signing a long fixed-price package in a high-price winter month and then watching the exchange fall below it for the whole summer, or the reverse, taking an exchange package in July and meeting the January price on the February bill. The third is comparing a price that includes VAT with one that does not. The fourth is paying the whole association invoice, repair fund included, because nobody explained which lines belong to an owner. The fifth is treating the district-heating tariff as a forecast of your own bill, when your bill is a share of the building's consumption and depends far more on the building than on the tariff.