Which apps do you actually need in Estonia?

The short list, in install order

Install Bolt, the ferry booking site, an intercity bus ticket app and the national weather app. That is genuinely most of it. Estonia is one of the most digitised countries in Europe, which means the useful apps are few and they work, rather than numerous and half-broken. Everything else — museum tickets, restaurant bookings, cinema seats, the sauna slot at your hotel — happens in a browser on a site that has a working English version and takes a foreign card without argument. You will not need cash to make any of it function.

What Estonia does not have is worth saying up front, because it saves downloads. There is no metro anywhere in the country, so no metro app. There is no national rail booking monopoly with seat reservations to wrestle; regional trains are turn-up-and-go. There is no toll app, no city entry permit, no mandatory tourist registration. And there is no VPN requirement — the internet is uncensored and public wifi is everywhere, including on most intercity coaches and in city buses in Tallinn and Tartu.

Bolt, and why you won’t miss taxis

Bolt was founded in Tallinn as a teenager's project and is now the default way Estonians move around cities. Airport to central Tallinn typically runs €10–15, a cross-town hop €4–7, Tartu station to the Old Town about €4. Prices are shown before you accept, the drivers arrive in minutes, and card payment is in-app so there is no fare argument. It works in Tallinn, Tartu, Pärnu, Narva, Viljandi and most towns of any size; coverage thins in Haapsalu on a winter Tuesday and disappears entirely in rural Lahemaa or Setomaa.

Street taxis still exist and are legal, but the yellow price card in the rear window is the thing to read before you get in — rates are unregulated and the ranks outside Tallinn's ferry terminals and Balti jaam have historically been where visitors overpay by three or four times. If you must take one, agree the approximate fare first. Bolt also runs scooters in Tallinn and Tartu at roughly €1 unlock plus per-minute charges, which is a fine way to cover the flat run from Kalamaja to the Old Town and a bad idea on Old Town cobbles.

City buses and trams: the ticket question

Tallinn's trams, trolleybuses and buses are free for registered residents, which confuses visitors who see nobody paying. You are not a resident, so you need either a Ühiskaart smartcard, sold at R-Kiosk newsagents for a small deposit and loaded with credit or an hour/day pass, or a QR ticket bought in the city transport app. A single ride costs in the region of €1.50–2 and a day ticket a few euros; buying from the driver is the most expensive option and needs cash. Validate at the reader by the door every single time — inspectors do work the number 2 and 4 trams.

Tartu runs its own system with a local bus card and app, again roughly €1.50 a ride with the card and more in cash, and the city's flat centre means you’ll walk most of it anyway. Pärnu, Viljandi and Haapsalu buses take cash or card from the driver and run infrequently enough that you should check the timetable rather than the app. In all three, the honest answer is that a 20-minute walk beats waiting 25 minutes for a bus, and the tram in Tallinn is the only urban transport worth planning around.

Coaches and trains between towns

For coaches, the national ticket portal covers almost every operator on one map, and the big international operator running Tallinn–Tartu, Tallinn–Pärnu and cross-border services to Riga has its own app with reserved seats, coffee machines and wifi. Book ahead and Tallinn–Tartu can be €6–9; buy at the counter on the day and it's closer to €13. The Tallinn coach station on Lastekodu street is where these leave from, not the ferry port, and it is a 10-minute tram ride from the Old Town rather than walking distance with luggage.

Trains are run by the national operator and are the better choice on four corridors: Tallinn–Tartu, Tallinn–Narva, Tallinn–Viljandi and Tallinn–Pärnu is bus-only, so ignore that last one. Buy in the app, on the website, or from the conductor on board with a card at a small surcharge. The Stadler trains are modern, quiet and have plug sockets and bike space. There are no compulsory reservations, so a missed train just means catching the next one — but on the Tartu line the next one may be two hours later, so check the timetable rather than assuming turn-up frequency.

Ferries, islands and the booking site that matters

The state ferry operator's booking site is the single most important thing to open before an island trip. It covers Virtsu–Kuivastu for Muhu and Saaremaa and Rohuküla–Heltermaa for Hiiumaa, shows live sailing status, and lets you reserve a car slot for free. In summer, do it days ahead; in winter, check it the morning you travel because ice and storms cancel sailings and the site posts it before anything else does. Smaller islands — Kihnu, Vormsi, Ruhnu, Manija — are served by a separate operator with its own timetable that changes between the summer and winter schedules.

For the big Baltic crossings, Tallinn–Helsinki takes about two hours on the fast ships and Tallinn–Stockholm is an overnight; both are booked on the shipping lines' own sites, where a foot passenger day return to Helsinki often costs less than a taxi across Tallinn. Do not confuse the terminals: the Old City Harbour sits a 20-minute walk from the Old Town across the Admiralty basin, while the Stockholm boats use a different quay entirely. Get the terminal letter from your booking and give the driver that, not the word harbour.

Weather, forests and bogs

The national weather service app is the one Estonians actually check, and it matters more here than in most places: a forecast of 4°C with wind off the Gulf of Finland in May feels like December, and thunderstorm warnings in July arrive fast. It also carries sea temperature, which decides whether Pärnu's beach is a swim or a walk, and the storm warnings that predict ferry cancellations 12 hours ahead of the ferry site.

For hiking, the state forest management agency runs a website and app listing every marked trail, free campfire site, forest hut and bog boardwalk in the country, with parking coordinates and current closures — including which boardwalks are being rebuilt, which happens constantly. This is how you find out that a bog trail is 4.8 kilometres of planking rather than a 20-minute stroll. Pair it with an offline map layer downloaded before you leave a town, because mobile coverage is good but not universal in Soomaa and eastern Võru county, and a battery in −10°C halves fast.

Money, food and the apps to skip

You will not need a payments app. Contactless cards work on essentially everything: market stalls, taxi terminals, museum kiosks, the ferry bar, a €1.20 coffee. Estonians pay by card for amounts other countries would consider absurd. Do install your own bank's app to watch for the dynamic currency conversion trick — if a terminal offers to charge you in your home currency, decline and pay in €, because the exchange rate baked into that offer is worse every time. Avoid the independent ATMs in tourist areas that charge several euros a withdrawal; use a bank-branded machine instead.

Food delivery is dominated by two apps that also do groceries, and in Tallinn or Tartu they’ll bring you dinner in 25 minutes for a €2–3 fee, which is genuinely useful on a wet November night. Skip the city sightseeing card app unless you’ll do three or more paid museums in a day — the 24-hour version costs around €35 and only breaks even if you’re moving fast. And skip translation apps as a survival tool: menus, signs and staff in every town you’ll visit already operate in English.