Software Engineer Salary in Estonia: Official Pay Data 2025

What software engineers earn in Estonia

Statistics Estonia publishes current monthly wages by economic sector, not by job title. In the information and communication sector (section J of the Estonian classification EMTAK 2008), which includes software and IT service companies, employees earned an average of €3,651 a month gross in 2025 and a median of €3,115. Across all sectors the average was €2,092 and the median €1,724, so pay in the sector sits about 1.75 times the national average and 1.81 times the national median (our calculation). Twelve months at the sector average comes to €43,812 a year (our calculation).

The figures come from tax and employment registers and cover everyone in the sector, not only engineers. They include bonuses, holiday pay and other payments, and they are adjusted for days worked and working time, so part-time work does not pull the average down. The spread is wide: in 2025 the lowest-paid 10% in the sector earned up to €1,246 a month and the top 10% at least €6,408. The latest quarter is higher still. In the second quarter of 2026 the sector average was €3,837 a month, 3.6% more than a year earlier, and the median €3,322.

Pay by occupation

Pay by occupation comes from the Structure of Earnings Survey, run every 4 years, and is published as gross hourly earnings for October. In October 2022, software developers (ISCO-08 occupation 2512) earned a mean of €22.90 an hour, 2.20 times the €10.42 average for all employees (our calculation). In October 2018 the figure was €15.41. Statistics Estonia counted 5,325 software developers in full-time units in 2022. Men in this occupation averaged €24.00 an hour and women €18.19.

Among related occupations, computer network professionals averaged €22.24 an hour, systems analysts €19.80, database designers and administrators €18.27, other software and applications developers and analysts €17.72 and applications programmers €15.28. ICT service managers averaged €26.26. For all ICT professionals the mean was €20.23 and the median €19.55, against a median of €9.08 for all employees. These figures cover full-time and part-time employees. Official statistics do not split pay by seniority, so there are no official figures for junior or senior engineers.

How Estonia compares in Europe

In Eurostat's Structure of Earnings Survey for 2022, professionals in the information and communication sector in Estonia earned a mean of €42,753 a year, 0.74 times the EU average of €57,522 (our calculation). That is close to Lithuania (€43,622), above Latvia (€37,414) and Poland (€29,721), and well below Finland (€65,145). Estonia had 47,500 ICT specialists in work in 2025, 6.8% of total employment, against 5.0% across the EU.

What an employer pays on top of salary

Estonian employers pay social tax of 33% on gross pay, which funds state pensions and health insurance, and an unemployment insurance premium of 0.8%. Social tax has a monthly minimum base of €886 in 2026, a minimum of €292.38 a month per employee, which does not bite at software pay levels. The employee's own unemployment insurance premium of 1.6% and the funded pension contribution of 2% (or 4% or 6% by the employee's choice) are withheld from pay, so they are not an extra cost to the employer.

For an employee on the 2025 sector average of €3,651 a month, the employer pays €1,204.83 in social tax and €29.21 in unemployment insurance: €1,234.04 a month, or 33.8% on top of salary. Over a year that is €14,808.46 on €43,812 of pay, for a total of €58,620.46 (our calculation, 2026 rates). Fringe benefits, voluntary pension or insurance contributions and other employment costs come on top.

Hiring a software engineer in Estonia remotely

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How we built these figures

Monthly figures come from Statistics Estonia tables PA101 (annual) and PA111 (quarterly), built from the Tax and Customs Board's employment register and TSD tax returns. They cover people working under employment contracts, the Civil Service Act and service contracts, and are averages per unit of work, adjusted for days worked and working time. They describe the whole information and communication sector, which also includes telecoms, publishing and broadcasting, not software engineers alone. Occupation figures come from tables PA633 and PA627 of the 2022 Structure of Earnings Survey (revised 17 Jun 2026) and are hourly, for October, for full-time and part-time employees. No official source publishes Estonian pay by job title such as frontend or backend engineer, by years of experience or by remote status. The Eurostat comparison is from 2022 and covers all professionals in the information and communication sector. Where we multiply or divide, we say so.

More guides

• Hiring in Estonia: employer costs and labor laws
• Average salary in Estonia
• Cost of living in Estonia
• Minimum wage in Estonia
• Software engineer salaries in Europe, compared by country
• Remote engineering jobs open to people in Europe