Baltic Basket · method

How we work · Back to the figures

How we work out Water, refuse and building fees

Everything on this page is generated from the module itself, so it cannot say one thing here and another on the front page.

Built from the data file published on 2026-10-18 00:40 UTC.

What this measures

Four household services in one card, and they are not measured the same way. Water and sewerage are per cubic metre in all three countries, so the unit is shared — but the basis is not: Latvia publishes a surveyed national average, Estonia the median of approved tariffs, Lithuania a regulated base price that is a floor rather than a bill. Refuse collection is not even shared in unit: Latvia bills per cubic metre of refuse, Estonia per container emptying, Lithuania per square metre of dwelling per month. No country publishes a price for the building management fee; Lithuania publishes a council-set ceiling, which is not a price either, and the only cross-country measure is an index.

This is a price, measured in EUR/m3.

One figure stands for the whole country.

The figure on the front page is: Water and sewerage, per cubic metre.

  • A national average retail price collected by the statistical office.
  • The middle value across the undertakings in the register, each counted once. It is not weighted by how many people each undertaking serves.
  • The base price the regulator approves for this undertaking. The invoice adds the adjustment components set each year and any separate fixed monthly charge, so the base price is a floor, not the bill.
  • Where a country has no national average, the middle undertaking is shown together with the full spread, and it is labelled as such.

What it does not measure

  • A national average is not your price. It is what the whole country paid on average; your supplier, your town and your day will differ.
  • This figure covers a whole period that has already ended. It is not the price today.

Where the numbers come from

Eurostat HICP monthly (prc_hicp_minr, coicop18 CP0441 water / CP0442 refuse / CP0443 sewerage / CP0444 other dwelling services) — INDEX, not a priceec.europa.euOfficial source · We read it 2026-10-05 13:02 UTC · Source published 2026-10-02 · CC-BY-4.0 (European Commission reuse policy)
Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia, PCC010m average retail prices (water 10 m3, sewage 10 m3, refuse 1 m3), monthly, VAT includeddata.stat.gov.lvOfficial source · We read it 2026-10-05 13:02 UTC · Source published 2026-09-08 · not verified: the stat.gov.lv terms page could not be retrieved by fetch (JS-rendered); the data.gov.lv registry lists CSB datasets as CC0 1.0
Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia, PCI021m consumer price index, ECOICOP 04.4.4.1 charges for maintenance of multi-occupied buildings — INDEX, not a pricedata.stat.gov.lvOfficial source · We read it 2026-10-05 13:02 UTC · Source published 2026-09-08 · not verified: the stat.gov.lv terms page could not be retrieved by fetch (JS-rendered); the data.gov.lv registry lists CSB datasets as CC0 1.0
Konkurentsiamet (Estonian Competition Authority) — national register of approved water and sewerage prices, one PDF with an as-of date, prices excluding VATkonkurentsiamet.eeOfficial source · We read it 2026-10-05 13:02 UTC · Source published 2026-09-21 · public register of a state authority
Konkurentsiamet water tariff register — 15 earlier editions of the same PDF (2019-12-20 to 2026-02-10), read from copies kept by the Internet Archive (web.archive.org); each edition is dated by what it states itself, prices excluding VATweb.archive.orgSecondary source · We read it 2026-10-05 13:02 UTC · Source published 2026-02-10 · archived copies of a public register of a state authority
Eesti Vee-ettevotete Liit (EVEL, the Estonian water utilities association) — its annual member survey 'VEEHINNA ANKEEDID KOOND', one XLSX per year: household water and sewerage prices per member undertaking, BOTH excluding and including VAT as published; an association's members, not the regulator's full registerevel.eeSecondary source · We read it 2026-10-05 13:02 UTC · Source published 2025-12-31 · not stated — permission requested
SIA Rīgas ūdens — the utility's own published tariff page (tariff set by SPRK decision); one named utility, not a national statisticrigasudens.lvBackground source · We read it 2026-10-05 13:02 UTC · Source published 2025-12-01 · published tariff on the utility's own site; robots.txt permits this agent (checked 2026-09-03)
Register of Legal Acts of Lithuania (TAR), republished as open data — VERT decisions setting water and wastewater base prices, full act text, prices excluding VATdata.gov.ltOfficial source · We read it 2026-10-05 13:02 UTC · Source published 2026-07-25 · open data, get.data.gov.lt permits automated access
What the kinds of source mean
  • Official — a statistics office, a regulator, or the exchange where the price was actually set.
  • Secondary — published by a company. Useful, named, but not official statistics.
  • Background — used for context only, never for a headline figure.

How often it arrives, and what we do when it is late

The source publishes once a month.

A fresh figure is normally about 45 day(s) old when it reaches us, because statistics describe a period that has already ended.

The figure now on the site describes 2026-08-31 and is 48 day(s) old.

Past twice that age the module is marked as old automatically. It cannot mark itself as fresh — we compute the age from the date the data describes.

If a fetch fails, the last good figure stays up with its original date, the module is marked as not updated, and it visibly ages until the source publishes again. An old number never gets today's date.

We last ran this module at 2026-10-17 06:02 UTC.

Taxes

VAT is already in the figure.

CountryVAT rateIn the figure?Basis
Latvia21%Yes—
Lithuania21%Yes—
Estonia24%Yes—
  • The source publishes this price without VAT. VAT has been added here at the statutory rate for this country, and both figures are shown.
  • Estonian figures carry VAT at the rate in force on each date: 20% to the end of 2023, 22% from January 2024 and 24% from July 2025. Part of the rise across those dates is tax, not tariff; the figure without VAT is published beside it.

Units and conversions

Unit: EUR/m3.

Latvia — History: 260 readings, from 2005-01-31 to 2026-08-31.

Lithuania — History: 118 readings, from 2016-12-31 to 2026-09-30.

Estonia — History: 17 readings, from 2019-12-20 to 2026-09-21.

Country by country

CountryCoverageWhy
LatviaCovered—
LithuaniaCovered—
EstoniaCovered—

What this figure cannot tell you

  • This list of gaps covers all countries together. A gap here does not mean this particular country is missing that month — the per-country detail says which is.

What the module itself flags

  • Each country bills refuse collection for a different physical thing, so the three numbers are not versions of one number and are never combined.
  • Latvian average prices are collected in Riga and nine other towns and weighted to a national figure. They are an average, not a count of all 42 municipalities.
  • The Latvian series runs from January 2005 and crosses the 2014 currency change. The statistical office republished the earlier years in euro at the fixed rate; the series is theirs, not a conversion done here.
  • Estonian approved prices run from 2.09 to 10.70 euro per cubic metre without VAT across 61 undertakings. A national average would be no household's bill.
  • Estonian sewerage prices are often split into pollution groups I to V. A household is group I, and that is the group shown.
  • The association's 42 members reported a median of 3.805 EUR/m³ on 2025-12-31; the register's 61 regulated undertakings had a median of 4.050 on 2026-09-21, a difference of -6.05%. Two lists, two dates — not one price measured twice.
  • Each row's price including VAT was checked against its price excluding VAT at 24%; 0 rows failed and were left out.
  • 30 earlier editions back to 2007-07-01 are listed but not yet read into the series.
  • The Estonian register is a snapshot with an as-of date and carries no history of its own. The earlier Estonian points are read from 15 earlier editions of the same register kept by the Internet Archive, the first dated 2019-12-20, each for the date it states; where no copy was kept there is no point, and none is filled in.
  • Estonian figures carry VAT at the rate in force on each date: 20% to the end of 2023, 22% from January 2024 and 24% from July 2025. Part of the rise across those dates is tax, not tariff; the figure without VAT is published beside it.
  • Lithuanian figures are regulated base prices for the apartment-customer category. The invoice adds annually set adjustment components and a separate fixed monthly charge.
  • Lithuanian base prices for an apartment customer run from 1.05 to 5.25 euro per cubic metre without VAT across 51 undertakings.
  • Lithuanian price decisions from 2007-12-30 to 2014-12-04 also exist in the register, 142 of them, and are not joined to this line. They come from before the 2015 rules: at least 129 of them are denominated in litas, at least 88 are not written as base prices at all, and 130 carry no end date. Joining them would be a different measurement under the same name.
  • The utility's own page also carries a tariff that only takes effect in 2027. The figure shown is the one in force today.
  • Neither Estonia nor Lithuania publishes a national refuse price level, so those two countries carry no refuse price here — only the index.
  • The statistical office collects this fee to build an index. It publishes the index and no average price level, and neither do we — there is none to publish.
  • Two limits travel with this ceiling: it is set without VAT while administrators charge with VAT, and it binds only buildings that have a municipality-appointed administrator. Buildings run by an owners' association are outside it.
  • A charge per cubic metre and a charge per month cannot be added into one number without saying how much water the household uses, and no such assumption is made here. The two are shown side by side instead.
  • History by country: EE 17, 2019-12-20 – 2026-09-21 · LT 118, 2016-12-31 – 2026-09-30 · LV 260, 2005-01-31 – 2026-08-31.
  • Points for LT, LV sit on the last day of the month they describe.
  • Points for EE carry the date the source itself states, which need not be a month end.
  • All three water and sewerage figures are euro per cubic metre, so the unit is the same and the numbers belong on one row. How each is built is not the same, and the differences between them are partly differences in construction. Latvia's is an average retail price surveyed in Riga and nine other towns and weighted to the country. Estonia's is the middle of the approved tariffs in the national register, each undertaking counted once however many people it serves. Lithuania's is the regulated base price, to which the bill still adds the yearly adjustment components and any fixed monthly charge.

The data itself

The same figures, machine-readable:

Everything the front page draws from, in one file:

Where this module stands right now

down

Not updated. The last good figure is still shown, with its own original date.

2026-08-31 · 48 d · 2026-10-17 06:02 UTC