Spanish Numbers – 1-100 and more [ Translator & Infographic ] (2024)

Would you like to learn how to write and read any Spanish number that comes to your mind? You’ve come to the right place!

Spanish numbers are easy to learn. In this article, you’ll find a step-by-step explanation and some useful tools, like our Spanish number translator (right below!)

Every Spanish numeral

First, let’s take a bird’s-eye view. These are all the numerals you’ll ever need to learn by heart. Any other number is written as a combination of them:

The rules: 1-1000

Main numbers in Spanish: units and tens

First of all, here are the Spanish numbers from 0 to 9:

Make sure you memorized them all (you’ll find some mnemonic aids below).

Now, let’s see the tens, from 10 to 90:

Now, you’ve learned a total of 19 Spanish numbers, right? Wrong! Actually, you know 82, because numbers from 31 all the way to 99 are formed simply by writing the tens and the units, separated by the word y (and).

Here’s how:

“Special” numbers: 1-30

But, what about the numbers from 11 to 29? There are specific numerals for them, so you’ll need to learn them by heart. Don’t worry though, you’ll notice some patterns that will make it easier.

Counting from 100 to 1000

Congratulations! Now you know how to count from 0 to 99. To be able to count all the way to 1000, you just need to learn ten more Spanish numbers, the hundreds:

To form the rest of the numbers, just write first the word for the hundreds, and then the “remaining” number, from 1 to 99, just as before.

But what is “one hundred” in Spanish? “One hundred” is ciento nearly always. It is cien only when the number is exactly 100, or when it goes right before mil (thousand), millones (millions), millardos (billions), billones (trillions), and so on (more on that later).

Large numbers

To be able to count all the way to millions, you just need to learn a couple of new words:

The thousands above 1000 are written exactly the same as in English: two thousand (dos mil), and so forth.

If the number is not an exact multiple of 1000, then simply add the rest at the end, just as in English:

Millions

For millions, you do also just as in English: first, you write the number of millions and then the rest of the number. The only difference is that when the number of millions is greater than one, the plural form is used (millones instead of millón).

Gazillions!

Unlike in English, in Spanish we use the long scale of powers of a million. That means that un billón is not “one thousand millions”, but “one million millions”. By the same token, un trillón is “one million of billones“, and so on:

In Spanish-speaking countries, a common mistake is to translate the word billion as billón. This is a serious (if understandable) error since the resulting number is 999000000000 units greater than the original.

On the other hand, this “mistake” is so common among Spanish speakers living in the USA that finally, in 2014, the Royal Spanish Academy added, in the 23rd edition of its dictionary, a second entry for the word billón in the USA, meaning precisely billion. Thus, for a Spanish speaker living in the USA, the use of the short scale is now considered acceptable.

The word «millón» is a noun

In sentences such as one million euros, you must use the word de (millón de, millones de). That’s because, strictly speaking, the word millón is not a numeral, but a noun. Thus, it is used in the same way as any other quantity noun:

• Un millón de dólares. — One million dollars.
• Un montón de monedas. — A pile of coins.
• Dos litros de agua. — Two liters of water.

The same happens with the words millardo, billón, trillón, and so on.

Mnemonics

The Spanish numbers can be more easily remembered if you associate them with English words that have a common origin (or some kind of resemblance).

Apocope and gender

The Spanish numbers uno and veintiuno are apocopated (shortened) when they are right before a noun, adjective or another numeral. Then they become un y veintiún, respectively:

Some numerals have specifically feminine forms. These are needed when the number precedes a feminine word:

On the other hand, the feminine forms are never apocopated.

In the last case (numerals ending in -one before mil), the feminine form is considered optional. That is, it is also correct (and frequent) to say treinta y un mil libras.

As millardo(s), millón(es), billón(es), etc., are all masculine nouns, numerals before them are always masculine: 21,000,000 pounds → veintiún millones de libras.

At this point, you should be able to do well on any of our quizzes on Spanish numbers. Go ahead, I’ll wait for you.

Spanish numbers with a decimal part

Periods, commas, apostrophes… Traditionally, several different delimiters have been used to separate the fractional part from the integer part of a decimal number. Currently, the recommended separator in Spanish is the comma, as established by international guidelines (the period is also acceptable, though).

For example, the number pi in Spanish is 3,14159… In words: tres coma uno cuatro uno cinco nueve…

The separator for the thousands was traditionally the period, but in the currently recommended format, it’s a white space (which can be a thin space). This way, we avoid possible confusion with the decimal point. Numbers with only four digits must not be separated.

Real examples of sentences with Spanish numbers

Los jueces le dieron cero (0) puntos.

No se puede conducir con más de 0,5 (cero coma cinco) gramos de alcohol por litro de sangre.

Marta tenía entonces veintiún años (21), Javier treinta y uno (31).

250 (doscientas cincuenta) personas se beneficiarán por el tope de 25,64 euros (veinticinco euros con sesenta y cuatro céntimos).

En 2016 (dos mil dieciséis), más de 472 (cuatrocientos setenta y dos) millones de personas tienen el español como lengua materna.

Some things you may have noticed:

• In Spanish, any quantity which is not exactly "1", including "0", is expressed in plural form. Even when the number is "1.0", or "1.00", the plural form is also used, as in 1,0 gramos.
• In some cases, it is correct to mix digits and letters to express a number, like in 400 millones (400000000) or 2,5 billones (2500000000000).
• When writing dates in Spanish, days of the month and years are typically written with numbers (e.g. 16 de febrero de 2016, although Roman numerals can also be used sometimes).

Some idioms using cardinal numbers

• ¡Eres el/la número uno! — “You’re the number one!” (the best).
• Una de dos, o pagas, o vas a la cárcel. — “One of two things is true: either you pay or you go to prison”.
• ¡No consigo dormirme ni a la de tres! — “I can’t fall asleep, no matter how hard I try!”
• Al funeral fueron cuatro gatos. — “Hardly a soul attended the funeral”.
• ¡Choca esos cinco! — “Let’s shake on it!”
• Se quedó allí más chulo que un ocho. — “He stood there prouder than a peaco*ck” (arrogant, show-off).
• Se mantuvo en sus trece todo el rato. — “He stuck to his guns all the time”.
• ¡Le voy a cantar las cuarenta! — “I’ll tell him a few home truths!”
• Ese tipo de cosas me ponen a cien. — “This sort of thing drives me up the wall” (make sb. angry, or very excited).
• Ayer estuvo allí el ciento y la madre.. — “The world and its wife was there yesterday”.
• Esa es la pregunta del millón. — “That’s the million-dollar question”.

References

If you can read Spanish, in these articles you’ll find more in-depth information about the Spanish numbers:

• The General article by the RAE's Diccionario Panhispánico de Dudas about números (numbers).
• Specific article of the DPD about cardinales (cardinal numbers).
• Very in-depth article about La Numeración (PDF, 172 KB), by the Spanish linguist and writerJosé Martínez de Sousa. Somewhat outdated, compared to the DPD, but still useful.

By Eduardo I. Iriarte Gahete.