Estonia is one of the last countries in Europe where you can walk into a petrol station, buy a SIM card with cash, and use it without giving anyone your name. That is the single most useful thing to know on arrival, and it is a live policy target — the Ministry of the Interior has proposed banning anonymous prepaid cards twice since 2020, and neither attempt became law.
Buy a prepaid card in any kiosk. No personal code, no passport, no address.
Three networks — Telia, Elisa, Tele2 — and no meaningful virtual operators. A starter pack costs €0.95 to €7 and works immediately. There is no registration requirement, which is unusual in Europe and worth using while it lasts.
The catch is the reverse of what people expect: you cannot activate an Estonian SIM from abroad, eSIM or plastic. Travel on a global eSIM, land, then buy one here.
Table of Contents
The three operators
| Telia | Elisa | Tele2 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Share of mobile users | 44% | 32% | 24% |
| Median download speed | 241 Mbit/s | 336 Mbit/s | 112 Mbit/s |
| Own 5G claim | 97% of population, 92% of territory | 97% of population | 85% |
| Cheapest usable plan | €6.09 — but only 50 MB | — | €6.99 for 2 GB |
| Unlimited data | €41.65 | €43.99 | €34.99 |
| Prepaid brand | Super | ZEN | Tele2 kõnekaart |
Elisa is measurably the fastest — 336 Mbit/s median download against Telia's 241 and Tele2's 112, over 900,000 tests in the second half of 2025. Tele2 is consistently the cheapest, at both ends of the range. Telia is the incumbent with the oldest rural site grid and the only one publishing a territory coverage figure.
All three coverage numbers above are self-reported and not comparable: Telia's 92% is territory, Elisa's is population, Tele2's "99% of Estonia" is the whole network rather than 5G. The regulator publishes no operator league table — its measurement data was last updated in February 2021. What it does publish is netikaart, an address-by-address availability map built from operator-supplied data. Check your own address there rather than trusting any of these percentages, including ours.
Estonia is a fibre leader and a 5G laggard, and both things are official
The operators claim 97% population 5G coverage. Estonia's own National Digital Decade Roadmap puts it at 43%, against an EU average of 81%. These cannot both be describing the same thing, and reconciling a government strategy document with a marketing page by picking one would be arbitrary. Assume 5G is good in Tallinn and Tartu and patchy elsewhere.
There is no MVNO layer worth naming. Super and Diil are Telia, ZEN is Elisa, and the regulator's 2025 yearbook contains no virtual-operator section at all. If a comparison page tells you about Estonian budget MVNOs, check whether the brands it names exist.
Prepaid, without an ID
Anonymous prepaid SIMs are still legal in Estonia
No personal code, no passport, no address, no registration. Buy a starter pack in a kiosk, supermarket or petrol station, insert it, and call. You may optionally personalise the card later, which you need to do only to convert it to a contract or swap a prepaid eSIM for plastic.
This is genuinely unusual in Europe and it is not guaranteed to last. The Ministry of the Interior proposed requiring personalisation before activation in July 2023, and a similar attempt was shelved around 2020. Neither became law, and we found no enacted amendment as at August 2026 — but this is a claim with a date on it for a reason.
| Pack | Price | What you get | Valid |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tele2 starter | €0.95 | 1 GB, calls, 10 SMS | 30 days |
| Super (Telia) starter | €1 | 300 MB, usable in Estonia and the EU | 30 days |
| Tele2 mid pack | €3.95 | 5 GB, 300 minutes, 30 SMS | 30 days |
| Super mid pack | €4 | 4 GB, 40 calls, 40 SMS | 30 days |
| Elisa kõnekaart | €5 | 5 GB, 500 minutes, 50 SMS | 30 days |
| Super short-stay pack | €7 | 100 GB, Estonia only | 7 days, non-renewable |
| Tele2 internet card | €9.95 | Unlimited data | 10 days |
The best short-stay deal in Estonia, and almost nobody writes about it
Telia's Super sells a €7 pack with 100 GB, valid 7 days and usable only in Estonia. For a week's visit that is better than any travel eSIM and better than any roaming bundle. It does not renew, which is the whole point — it is priced for exactly one trip.
Two things to know before your credit runs out. Prepaid credit is valid 180 days from activation at both Telia and Tele2, with a grace period after that; at Tele2 the number itself is lost after 210 days without a top-up. And when a bundle is exhausted, speed drops to 64 kbit/s rather than stopping — which is slow enough to be useless and fast enough not to notice you have hit it.
Contracts, and the thing that actually blocks a newcomer
It is not the personal code. It is the credit check.
No operator publishes a "what documents do I need" page — we looked at all three. What their terms do establish is that Tele2 may check your creditworthiness against credit databases, and that Telia may require a guarantee, a deposit or prepayment at any point in the contract.
That is the mechanism a newly arrived foreigner actually meets: not refusal, but a demand for a deposit, because there is no Estonian credit history to check. Neither operator's general terms mention an isikukood requirement, a minimum age or a required identity document, and none states that an Estonian bank account is needed. It is simply not documented.
| What the terms actually say | |
|---|---|
| Credit check | Tele2 reserves the right to assess creditworthiness via credit databases |
| Deposit or guarantee | Telia may require a guarantee, surety or prepayment on signing or during the contract |
| Documents required | Not published by any of the three |
| Estonian bank account | Not stated either way — direct debit assumes one, card payment is offered |
| Minimum term | Indefinite or 24-month, depending on plan. Home internet is usually 24 months only |
| Terminating | Any time, effective the next business day |
| If the operator changes the terms | One month's notice, and no penalty for leaving over the change |
Typical mid-market plans run 15–55 GB for €11–€24 a month, which is the honest answer to "what does a normal person pay". Unlimited domestic data starts at €34.99 at Tele2, against €41.65 at Telia and €43.99 at Elisa.
"Unlimited calls" does not mean calls to other EU countries
Every Estonian plan sold as unlimited means unlimited domestic. Telia caps calls to EU numbers at 300 minutes and SMS at 100; Elisa allows 1,000–2,000 depending on tier. A call to a number outside the EU is never in any bundle at any operator. See below — this is where the money goes.
eSIM, and why you cannot arrive with a working Estonian number
Before you fly: a travel eSIM, not an Estonian one
An Estonian prepaid SIM — plastic or eSIM — can only be activated while you are physically in Estonia. Telia's Super says so in terms. Use a global travel eSIM for the journey, or arrive offline.On arrival: buy a starter pack
A kiosk, a supermarket, a petrol station or the Super app once you are in the country. €0.95 to €7 depending on what you need.Later: convert to a contract, once you have a personal code
Personalise the prepaid card, or start a new contract. This is also the point at which a deposit may be asked for.
| Telia / Super | Elisa / ZEN | Tele2 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| eSIM on contract | Yes, self-service | Yes — but ordered through chat, not self-service | Yes, QR code voucher |
| eSIM on prepaid | Yes, first in Estonia, via the app | No — prepaid customers are excluded outright | Not stated |
| Activate from abroad | No — Estonia only | No | Not stated |
| Fee | Not published | Not published | Not published. SIM replacement is €5.08, rising to €7 in September 2026 |
Two eSIM products at Telia are easy to confuse and are not the same thing. The Super prepaid eSIM gives you an Estonian number and can only be activated here. Super Travel eSIM is data-only, has no Estonian number, no calls and no SMS, and can be bought up to 30 days before a trip — it is a travel product that happens to be sold by an Estonian operator, and it will not get you a local number.
Roaming, and the calls that cost real money
Inside the EU your domestic allowance simply works, at no surcharge, under a regulation that runs until 2032. Moldova and Ukraine joined the roaming area on 1 January 2026. The United Kingdom and Switzerland are outside it, which catches people constantly.
Why your unlimited plan has a roaming cap, and how to predict it
An unlimited plan carries a roaming data cap set by a formula, not by the operator's mood: monthly price excluding VAT ÷ the wholesale cap per GB, × 2. The 2026 wholesale cap is €1.10 per GB. That is why the caps land where they do — Telia 53–59 GB, Tele2 56–69 GB, Elisa 65–79 GB — and why a more expensive plan gets a bigger one.
An Estonian SIM used permanently from abroad will eventually be surcharged
Roam-like-at-home requires a stable link to Estonia — residence, work, study or paying tax here. Operators assess usage over at least 4 consecutive months, and the majority of it must be in Estonia. Fail the test and you get an SMS warning; if the pattern continues for 14 days, surcharges start. This is real, it is in the operators' published terms, and almost no English-language guide mentions it.
| What you are doing | What it costs |
|---|---|
| Using data in the EU on your normal allowance | Nothing extra |
| Calling another EU country from Estonia | Capped by EU law at €0.19/min excluding VAT — about €0.24 with it |
| Calling a non-EU number from Estonia | Uncapped. About €1.89/min to most destinations |
| Calling a non-EU number while roaming in the EU | About €2.35/min — the most expensive accident on this page |
| Receiving a call from abroad | Free |
| Data outside the EU | Daily packages, roughly €6–€12 at Telia. Default spend limit €60, adjustable |
If you are going east, turn off automatic network selection
Around Narva and Lake Peipsi, Estonian operators must reduce transmit power in the border zone — so your phone can latch onto a stronger Russian network and roam without you noticing. Tele2 warns that every megabyte can then cost several euros. Russia is not in the EU roaming area, so no cap applies and no spend limit reacts fast enough. Select the network manually before you get there. This is the most useful practical warning on this page for anyone visiting Ida-Viru — see Narva.
There is one more thing worth knowing, published in August 2026 and almost certainly not in any other English-language guide. If one operator's network fails in a crisis, the state can switch on domestic roaming, letting your phone use another Estonian operator's network for calls, SMS and data. You are always told when it is active — but your phone may not move across by itself, and you may need to select another operator's network manually.
Home internet
The interesting number is the gap between the first two
Fibre passes 77% of Estonian homes and carries 35% of connections. Availability against take-up is the whole story, and every "Estonia has world-leading fibre" article misses it. Cable and copper still carry most of the market, and 13% of fixed connections are now 4G or 5G wireless boxes — a share that exists because of the row below.
A quarter of Estonian addresses have exactly one cable operator, and 23% have no cable infrastructure at all. In those buildings your choice is the incumbent, or a 5G box. That is precisely why Elisa and Tele2 price 5G home internet against fibre rather than below it.
| Typical published price | |
|---|---|
| Entry fibre, Tele2 50/50 | €19.99/month, 24-month term |
| Elisa Internet-M | €19.99/month |
| Telia 100/100 | €27.90/month |
| Router rental | €2–€7/month depending on operator and type |
| Detached-house connection | From €199 at Elisa, and Telia charges construction on top with no published figure |
| Foreigner eligibility | Not published. Expect a deposit rather than a refusal |
Before you sign a lease, check the address on the regulator's availability map. If the building is single-provider, price a 5G box as the real alternative rather than discovering it afterwards. And note the regulator's own view that Estonian home internet is not the outlier it is sometimes made out to be: a good 100 Mbit/s line is around €25 a month and prices up to 500 Mbit/s sit below the European average — it is gigabit that is expensive, and fewer than one customer in ten thousand wants it.
Keeping your number
How it works
Two routes, both free:
- Go to the new operator. They terminate the old contract and register the request. You get a SIM immediately on a conditional contract
- Or go to the old one and sign a conditional termination valid 30 days, then approach a new provider within that window
- Do nothing in 30 days and the old contract simply reinstates
- Free of charge, and centrally administered by the regulator
What to expect
And one negotiating tip:
- Typically 3–6 working days; the regulator's stated statutory ceiling for mobile is 25
- 72,409 numbers were ported in 2025, 64,057 of them mobile
- Around 45,000 people a year cancel their port after a retention offer from the operator they were leaving
- Which makes starting a port a negotiating tool in itself, whether or not you finish it
FAQ
Can I buy a SIM card in Estonia without an ID?
Yes, as at August 2026. Estonia is one of the few European countries that still permits anonymous prepaid SIM cards — no personal identification code, no passport, no address and no registration. Buy a starter pack for €0.95–€7 in a kiosk, supermarket or petrol station and it works immediately. The Ministry of the Interior proposed banning anonymous cards in July 2023 and around 2020, and neither proposal became law, so date-check this before relying on it.
Can I get an Estonian eSIM before I arrive?
No. An Estonian prepaid SIM, plastic or eSIM, can only be activated while you are physically in Estonia — Telia's Super brand states this explicitly, and Elisa excludes prepaid customers from eSIM entirely. The practical sequence is to travel on a global travel eSIM, land, and then buy an Estonian starter pack. Note that Super Travel eSIM is a separate data-only product with no Estonian number, no calls and no SMS.
Which mobile operator is best in Estonia?
Elisa is measurably the fastest — 336 Mbit/s median download in Ookla's second-half 2025 measurement, against Telia's 241 and Tele2's 112. Tele2 is consistently the cheapest, at €6.99 for an entry plan and €34.99 for unlimited data. Telia is the incumbent with the widest rural grid. Nobody publishes an independent rural coverage comparison, so check your own address on the regulator's availability map.
How much does mobile data cost in Estonia?
A typical mid-market plan is 15–55 GB for €11–€24 a month. Unlimited domestic data starts at €34.99 with Tele2, €41.65 with Telia and €43.99 with Elisa. Prepaid is cheaper for short stays: Telia's Super sells 100 GB for €7, valid 7 days and usable only in Estonia.
Does my Estonian SIM work in the rest of the EU?
Yes, at no surcharge, under EU roaming rules that run to 2032. Moldova and Ukraine joined the roaming area on 1 January 2026; the United Kingdom and Switzerland are outside it. Unlimited plans carry a roaming data cap set by formula — monthly price excluding VAT divided by the €1.10 wholesale cap, doubled — which is why the caps are around 53–79 GB depending on operator. Using an Estonian SIM permanently from another country eventually triggers surcharges, because roam-like-at-home requires a stable link to Estonia.
Is number portability free in Estonia?
Yes. Porting is free, centrally administered by the regulator, and typically takes 3–6 working days against a stated statutory ceiling of 25 for mobile numbers. You can either go to the new operator, who handles the whole thing, or sign a conditional termination with your existing one that stays valid 30 days. 72409 numbers were ported in 2025.
Buying an Estonian eSIM before flying
It cannot be activated from outside Estonia. Travel on a global eSIM and buy locally on arrival.
Assuming unlimited calls covers the EU
Unlimited means domestic. Telia caps EU calls at 300 minutes; calls outside the EU are never included anywhere.
Roaming near the Russian border on automatic
Your phone can pick up a Russian network at Narva or Lake Peipsi. No EU cap applies and every megabyte can cost euros.
Citing Opensignal rankings for Estonia
There is no current Opensignal Estonia report — the most recent is February 2022. Any 2026 page quoting one is recycling four-year-old data.
Naming Estonian budget MVNOs
There aren't any of consequence. Super and Diil are Telia, ZEN is Elisa, and the regulator's yearbook has no virtual-operator section.
Letting prepaid credit lapse
Credit is valid 180 days, and at Tele2 the number itself is gone after 210 days without a top-up.
Related guides
Getting connected
An Estonian number is what most services text their codes to, and an eSIM covers the gap before you have one. Both are worth sorting in the first week.