On 1 January 2024, foreign citizens and stateless people made up 17.9%^* of the people living in Estonia, against 9.6%^* across the EU — the 5th highest share of the 27 EU states that publish it.

The largest single foreign citizenship among residents is Russia: 77,001 people on 1 January 2025.

In 2024, 18,634 people moved to Estonia and 17,260 left: a difference of 1,374^*, more arrivals than departures.

Citizens and foreigners

Residents of Estonia on 1 January 2024, by the citizenship they hold. Every line is a separate figure Eurostat publishes; the site adds none of them together.

Residents of Estonia by citizenship, 1 January 2024
Citizenship	People	Share of residents
All residents	1,374,687	—
Foreign citizens and stateless peopleOne group Eurostat publishes, shown beside the lines below	246,478	17.9%^*
Citizens of Estonia	1,127,312	82.0%^*
Citizens of other EU countries	22,936	1.7%^*
Citizens of countries outside the EU	223,542	16.3%^*
Stateless people	0	0.00%^*
Citizenship not stated	897	0.07%^*

Against the other EU states

Foreign citizens and stateless people as a share of residents on 1 January 2024, for the states ranked next to Estonia. Only states that publish both figures that year are ranked.

Foreign-citizen share, Estonia and the states ranked next to it, 1 January 2024
Rank	Country	Foreign citizens and stateless people, share of residents
3	Cyprus	24.0%^*
4	Austria	19.5%^*
5	Estonia	17.9%^*
6	Ireland	15.3%^*
7	Germany	14.5%^*
—	European Union (27, from 2020) (reference, not ranked)	9.6%^*

Ranks compare the 27 EU member states. Eurostat’s figure for Cyprus covers the government-controlled area only.

Largest foreign citizenships

Residents of Estonia by individual citizenship on 1 January 2025, the ten largest of the 197 citizenships Eurostat publishes. This is the citizenship people hold, not where they were born and not their ethnicity.

Ten largest foreign citizenships among residents of Estonia, 1 January 2025
Rank	Citizenship	People	Share of residents
1	Russia	77,001	5.62%^*
2	Ukraine	63,792	4.66%^*
3	Latvia	5,442	0.40%^*
4	Finland	4,350	0.32%^*
5	Belarus	2,879	0.21%^*
6	Germany	2,016	0.15%^*
7	India	1,944	0.14%^*
8	Lithuania	1,863	0.14%^*
9	Nigeria	1,450	0.11%^*
10	Italy	1,400	0.10%^*

Country of birth

Residents of Estonia by where they were born, on 1 January 2025. This is a different question from citizenship: someone born abroad may hold Estonia's citizenship, and someone born in Estonia may not.

Residents of Estonia by country of birth, 1 January 2025
Country of birth	People	Share of residents
All residents	1,369,995	—
Born in Estonia	1,126,120	82.2%^*
Born in another country	243,255	17.8%^*
Born in another EU country	26,036	1.9%^*
Born outside the EU	217,219	15.9%^*
Country of birth not stated	620	0.05%^*

Arrivals and departures

People who moved to or left Estonia during each calendar year, as reported to Eurostat. Arrivals and departures are separate published figures; the difference is the site's subtraction of the two for the same year.

Arrivals, departures and their difference, Estonia, 2024 and earlier years
Year	Arrived	Left	Arrived minus left
2024	18,634	17,260	1,374^*
2023	26,399	12,543	13,856^*
2022	49,414	9,657	39,757^*
2021	19,524	12,481	7,043^*
2020	16,209	12,427	3,782^*
2019	18,259	12,801	5,458^*

By citizenship, 2024

Arrivals and departures by the citizenship of the person moving. Each line is a separate published figure; none is added to another.

Arrivals and departures by citizenship, Estonia, 2024
Citizenship	Arrived	Left
Citizens of Estonia	5,218	6,472
Citizens of other EU countries	3,128	3,458
Citizens of countries outside the EU	10,191	7,150
Stateless people	0	0
Citizenship not stated	97	180

How to read these figures

Citizenship is the legal bond between a person and a state. Country of birth is where a person was born. They are different facts and different tables, and neither records ethnicity, origin or descent.
Residents counted at 1 January are a stock; arrivals and departures are events during a calendar year. A flow is never a change in a stock, and the two are not divided by each other here.
Eurostat takes each country’s own statistics. Countries differ in who counts as an arrival or a resident, so comparisons between countries are approximate.

Cyprus, covered in full

Cyprus is the one country this site covers in full, down to its districts. Its immigration page is the deepest example of what a country page can hold.

Keep reading

Modification notice and disclaimer

The counts on this page are published by Eurostat (Statistical Office of the European Union) and are reproduced unchanged. Humanity Observatory has additionally derived the following from them:

A share of residents, computed by dividing one published count by another from the same table, country and date (for example foreign citizens by all residents).
A country's rank among the EU states for its foreign-citizen share, computed by sorting the published figures of the states that publish both counts for the year.
The difference between published immigration and published emigration for the same country and year (arrivals minus departures). It is a subtraction of two published figures, not a net-migration figure published by Eurostat.
The ten largest individual citizenships, selected by sorting the published figures for the latest year in which most countries are published.

Source: Eurostat. Reuse terms.

^* Calculated by Humanity Observatory from published figures.

Where these numbers come from → Compare the foreign-citizen share across countries →