Average salary in Estonia by industry: €3,486 in IT, €985 in personal services
An entity.ee analysis of business register reports: estimated average gross pay differs up to 3.5-fold between industries, pay in the same companies rose 51.7% in 2019–2025, and Harju County leads even within the same industry.
All years as a table
| Year | Revenue | Profit | Employees |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 1 465 875 000 € | 46 847 000 € | 866 |
| 2024 | 1 122 869 000 € | 124 958 000 € | 868 |
| 2023 | 972 446 000 € | 119 553 000 € | 795 |
| 2022 | 838 783 000 € | 114 611 000 € | 764 |
| 2021 | 590 716 000 € | 346 000 € | — |
| 2020 | 258 995 074 € | 167 256 € | — |
| 2019 | 165 709 682 € | 3 461 744 € | — |
What is the average salary in Estonia? Statistics Estonia measured the 2025 average gross wage at €2,092. Based on business register reports, the estimated average gross monthly pay at Estonian companies was €1,875 in 2025, but the gap between industries is up to 3.5-fold: €3,486 in programming and IT consulting versus €985 in personal services (hairdressers, laundries, funeral services and the like). Pay depends on company size and location, but most of all on the industry. This is an entity.ee estimate based on business register annual reports (54,770 private and public limited companies, 285,000 full-time equivalents), not official wage statistics.
The calculation: labour expense from the annual report divided by 1.338 (social tax and unemployment insurance), by the number of full-time equivalents and by 12 months, with company totals weighted by headcount. Statistics Estonia put the 2025 annual average gross wage at €2,092 (ERR); our estimate is about 90% of that, because our data cover only private limited companies, public limited companies and partnerships (the public sector and foundations are missing), and owners of micro-companies often pay themselves a small salary. The change matches: pay in the same companies rose 5.8% from 2024 to 2025 (€1,805 → €1,910), against 5.6% measured by Statistics Estonia.
IT pays the most (€3,486, 2,978 companies, 11,000 employees), followed by health care (€2,648), civil engineering (€2,431) and wholesale trade (€2,292). The lowest is in personal services (€985), food and beverage service (€1,165), and building services and landscaping and the repair of computers and household goods (€1,318 each). The IT average does not come from a single giant: excluding the two Bolt companies (the largest IT employer being Bolt Operations OÜ with 866 full-time equivalents), the result is still €3,423. The gap has widened: in 2019 the ratio of IT to personal services was 3.3 (€2,462 vs €746), in 2025 it is 3.5.
In the same companies the average pay rose 51.7% from 2019 to 2025 (€1,283 → €1,945, 28,253 companies). It grew fastest in health care (+70%), civil engineering (+61%), IT (+60%) and food service (+60%), and slowest in construction of buildings (+33%), staffing (+36%) and furniture manufacturing (+42%). The health care growth does not reflect public hospitals, because they are neither private nor public limited companies.
Growth was also large in low-paying industries: food service €765 → €1,222 and building services and landscaping €861 → €1,356. These industries grew at roughly the same pace as IT, so the absolute gap still widened. If you want to know what take-home pay and employer cost go with a given pay level, you can work it out with the 2026 salary calculator: at Estonia's average gross wage (€2,092) the net pay is €1,727 and the employer cost €2,799, and at the minimum wage (€946 from 1 April 2026) €865 and €1,266. At the IT average (€3,486 gross) the net pay is €2,775 and the employer cost €4,664, and at the personal services average (€985) €895 and €1,318.
Company size matters: in companies with fewer than five employees the average pay is €1,256, in companies with 10–49 employees €2,032 and in companies with 50–249 employees €2,309. In the largest companies, with at least 250 employees, it is €2,136, so not the highest. There are 44,582 companies with fewer than five employees (81% of companies), but they employ only 24% of employees. The owner of a small company often pays themselves a minimal salary and takes the rest as a dividend, which pulls the average down (see the dividend calculator).
Among counties Harju is clearly ahead: €2,048 (59% of all employees), followed by Tartu at €1,776 and Järva at €1,774. The lowest are Võru (€1,395), Hiiu (€1,435) and Valga (€1,469). The Harju average is 47% above Võru. The county here is the company's registered address, so it does not always coincide with where employees actually work (a chain registered in Harju County may be an employer across Estonia).
Is it only the industry mix? Only partly. If you calculate what each county's average would be if every industry paid the national average, Harju's expected figure is €1,947 (national €1,874), and the actual €2,048 is 5% higher. Within the same industry Harju pays more almost everywhere: 44% in civil engineering, 31% in accommodation and real estate, 30% in IT, 30% in wholesale and 14% in retail. The exception is health care (+0.7%). In Ida-Viru and Võru the actual pay is 17–19% lower than the industry mix would predict (Ida-Viru €1,520 vs €1,833, Võru €1,395 vs €1,715).
Limitations: the estimate is based on labour expense, which may include costs other than pay, and on the number of full-time equivalents, which companies report with varying precision; every industry and county figure is an average, not any one person's pay. The public sector, foundations, non-profits and sole proprietors are missing from the analysis. About 92% of 2025 reports have been filed (54,770 companies vs 58,775 a year earlier), so exact figures may change with later reports. To calculate changes we used the same companies so that a change in composition would not affect the result. The industry is the one the company stated in its report.