Historically, well before Unicount and e-Residency came to town, non-residents having Estonian companies had to collect certified copies of registration certificates either from the Estonian Business Register by physically visiting it, or by visiting both Business Register and a notary. Estonian notaries would certify with their stamp that the Business Register stamped certificate was legit and sometimes even add an apostille if the certification of the Estonian notary was not good enough in the intended country of use.
In most cases, founders did not bother to come to Estonia for all that and had to pay their virtual office service providers to collect those stamped documents while paying hundreds of euros in fees. Not anymore.
No more paper
First of all, Estonian Business Register stopped issuing paper documents a while ago. It makes sense if you are in Estonia serving Estonian entrepreneurs who never need a paper document to prove that they have a company where they are board members. All counterparts checked information online to validate your right to representation and the existence of the company.
Soon world followed, and most reasonable service providers including fintech business account providers serving e-resident companies do not expect you to deliver any paper documents. It makes sense economically as handling any paper is more costly and the related workflows are harder to automate. Automatically checking if the registration details you submitted are correct is easy in Europe where business register details are public and the data belongs to the people, not the government agency running the register. EU regulation even stopped Estonian Business Register from selling the data they held. This meant losing millions of euros of income.
Estonian company registration certificates
Electronic PDF registration certificates are available for free from the Estonian e-Business Register. This is what a machine-translated registration certificate looks like in English. To get your free registration certificate go to the e-Business Register and search for your company name or registry code.
The registry card is machine translated and may accidentally contain information in Estonian too as the original language of the information in the Business Register is Estonian. To order an official translation, please contact a sworn translator. For certified paper documents, you should contact one of the notaries in Estonia. Estonian Business Register does not issue paper documents including any certified documents. Estonian notaries are also responsible for issuing an apostille to certify the Estonian public records for use in other foreign jurisdictions.
List of shareholders and other documents
The easiest way to obtain an uncertified electronic PDF document showing the information of your Estonian company shareholders would also be via the e-Business Register free online service. Go to the e-Business Register and find the company you are interested in. The data on all companies are available for free to anyone since October 2022.
Scroll down to these tabs. Click on the PDF icon in the registry data tab. This creates a PDF print menu allowing you to print much more than just a machine-translated company registration certificate. You can easily create documents that include information about shareholders and founders.
Buffet-style document generation
Since June 2023, the Estonian e-Business Register lets you create documents with any content available on the public register. You just pick whatever you like by ticking the boxes in the print menu. All this will be printed on a PDF file that now has a QR code which just links to your public company details URL. All Estonian companies on the register have a unique URL since September 2022.
- Basic information
Registration date
Type of legal person
Share capital
Registered office address
Financial year
Date of current articles of association adopted
Company email and other contacts published to the register - Persons
Persons on registry card (board members)
Partners (shareholders)
Beneficial owners
Other persons (contact person for example) - Economic data
Share capital
Financial year
Annual accounts information on principal activity and number of employees (FTE)
Public tax information including tax debts in Estonia, paid taxes, taxable turnover and number or registered employees
VAT number and registration date
Areas of activity - Documents
List of articles of association
List of public documents submitted to the register - Court rulings
List of court rulings (In Estonia court is in charge of the Business Register filings)
List of changes to the registration details - Additional information
Activity licences and notices of economic activities in Estonia
Official Gazette notices - Registration certificate
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