BACKGROUND: About 3,500 people have suffered tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) in 2011 in Russia, and approximately 16% of them had focal form with a high case-fatality and disability rate. However, no research has investigated its social costs. OBJECTIVES: to evaluate the socio-economic burden of TBE in Russia. METHODS: We proposed a probability-tree model accounting for 4 clinical outcomes of the disease: full recovery, progression to chronic disease, disability, and death; probabilities were taken from Russian clinical and epidemiological studies. Each outcome was associated with particular costs that included direct current and deferred medical and social costs. Tariffs of the Russian health care system were used to calculate all medical costs; indirect costs were estimated using the average monetary daily productivity and mean disability allowance. All future costs were discounted to the basis year (2011). The model estimated the one-year average socio-economic burden of the disease which could be aggregated into the gross burden by incorporating data on annual TBE incidence in previous years. Additionally we evaluated disability adjusted life years (DALYs) attributable to TBE using standard WHO methodology. RESULTS: We found that economic TBE burden in Russia in 2011 was about $49.5 million, 78% of which was deferred costs, caused by death and disability. We estimate total 4,177 DALYs caused by TBE in 2011. CONCLUSIONS: TBE burden is quite large in Russia, thus economic evaluation of preventive measures is essential in order to choose the most cost-effective options.