Tartu Good value
A student town’s cafés and bars, cheap and good, along Rüütli street and in the Aparaaditehas factory quarter. Black bread, soups, and the pubs’ kitchens. A dinner is €15–20.
Budget travel in Estonia
What a visitor's money does in Estonia: every guide rated from very cheap to very expensive, cheapest first, then the things that cost travellers money without buying anything — the ATM, the taxi, the SIM.
Mid-range average across 6 guides · 5 is very cheap
Money
Euro (EUR) · 1 EUR = 1.15 USD · 1 EUR = 0.86 GBP
Euro, and nearly nobody uses cash: cards and phones pay for everything down to a market stall. Change money only if you arrive with it; the booths in the old town charge for the privilege.
ATMs
Avoid: Euronet, the machines in the old town tourist streets
Use: Swedbank, SEB, LHV
Estonia is as close to cashless as a country gets; a card and a phone do everything. Withdraw a little for the odd market stall and nothing more.
Getting around
A short ride in Tallinn: €5–8 across town — middling
From the airport: From the airport to the centre €8–12, or tram 4 for €2
Cheaper than a street taxi and the same car; nobody hails one any more.
City by city, cheapest first
Haapsalu Good value
Smoked fish on the promenade, the Kuursaal restaurant for the occasion, and the cafés on Karja street. Small and seasonal.
Pärnu Mid-range
Fish, smoked and fried, on the beach and in the town; the spa hotels do the buffets; the cafés on Rüütli street do the rest. A dinner is €20.
Saaremaa Mid-range
Island bread, smoked fish, the Saaremaa cheese and the local beer; the restaurants in Kuressaare and the farm cafés along the roads. The island juniper flavours everything it can.
Lahemaa Mid-range
The Altja tavern for pork and beer, the manor restaurants for the formal version, and the village shops for smoked fish. Bring lunch for the bog.
Tallinn Mid-range
Black bread, smoked fish, elk, and a new Nordic scene that has arrived in the Telliskivi and Rotermann quarters; the old town has the medieval theme restaurants and the tourist prices. Kohuke, the curd snack, from any shop. A dinner is €25–35.
The cost rating is this site's own, for a visitor, from the guides' authors and the corrections readers send in. The general rules — the conversion prompt, shoulder season, the airport taxi — are in budget travel tips.
The guides in Estonia
TallinnEstoniaThe best-kept medieval city in northern Europe, with a startup nation behind the walls, a sauna culture that means it, and Helsinki two hours across the water
PärnuEstoniaThe summer capital: a long shallow beach on a warm bay, spa hotels from the tsars’ time, and a wooden town behind the dunes
TartuEstoniaThe university town on the Emajõgi, a kissing-students fountain, a science centre for the family, and the intellectual capital of a country that takes the idea seriously
SaaremaaEstoniaThe big island: a Teutonic castle with a moat, windmills, a meteorite crater, juniper heath and a coast that nobody else has found
LahemaaEstoniaEstonia’s first national park, an hour from Tallinn: bog boardwalks, manor houses, fishing villages on a stony coast, and the forest that is most of the country
HaapsaluEstoniaA small spa town on a warm bay with a bishop’s castle, a promenade Tchaikovsky walked, a railway station with the longest platform in the north, and a lace shawl to buy