Populated places in Estonia are settlements or territorial units within a municipality. Populated places have no administrative functions. A group of populated places form a rural municipality with local administration. Most towns constitute separate urban municipalities, while some have joined with surrounding rural municipalities.
Officially there are four types of populated places in Estonia:
As of 1 November 2002, there are 47 towns, 9 boroughs, 173 small boroughs and 4,430 villages in Estonia.