Numbers 1 to 100 in Spanish: uno to cien

The numbers 1 to 100 in Spanish are regular once you are past 15. From 16 to 29 each number is one word, dieciséis, veintidós; from 31 to 99 it is three, joined by y, "and": treinta y uno, noventa y nueve. One hundred is cien. Below are all the numbers from 1 to 100, the rules behind them, and which ones Spanish films say most.

Updated 14 October 2026 · 5 min read

Spanish numbers 1 to 100

The rules, in order

1 to 15 are single words and have to be learned: uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco, seis, siete, ocho, nueve, diez, once, doce, trece, catorce, quince.

16 to 19 are "ten and six" written as one word: dieciséis, diecisiete, dieciocho, diecinueve. The diez y has been squeezed into dieci-.

21 to 29 are "twenty and one" written as one word: veintiuno, veintidós, veintitrés. The veinte y has become veinti-.

From 31 the three parts are written separately: treinta y uno (31), cuarenta y dos (42), noventa y nueve (99). The y only ever goes between the tens and the units.

The tens are diez, veinte, treinta, cuarenta, cincuenta, sesenta, setenta, ochenta, noventa. Sesenta (60) and setenta (70) differ by one letter and are the pair learners mix up.

The four accents

Joining the words changes where the stress falls, so four numbers need a written accent: dieciséis (16), veintidós (22), veintitrés (23) and veintiséis (26). The plain words seis, dos and tres have none.

Uno, un and una

Uno is the number on its own: counting, phone numbers, "I have one". Before a noun it changes:

• un libro, one book (masculine)
• una casa, one house (feminine)

The same happens inside bigger numbers: veintiún años, "twenty-one years" (with an accent), treinta y una personas, "thirty-one people".

Cien and ciento

One hundred exactly is cien: cien euros. As soon as anything follows, it is ciento: ciento uno (101), ciento veinte (120). In Spanish subtitles cien is said 42.2 times per million words and ciento 29.4; the second figure includes por ciento, "per cent".

Which numbers do Spanish films say most?

Counted in Spanish film and television subtitles, per million words:

Dos is said 1.4 times as often as uno, though that flatters it: before a noun "one" is un or una, which are also the words for "a" and are counted elsewhere. After that the order follows the counting order, with two exceptions that turn up in every language we counted: five is said more than four, and ten more than seven, eight and nine. Round numbers get used for approximations, cinco minutos, diez años, and that lifts them.

Pronunciation notes

• Cinco, once, doce, trece, catorce, quince: the c before e or i is an s sound in Latin America and a th sound in most of Spain.
• Cuatro and cuarenta: cu is "kw".
• Seis and siete have two vowels gliding together: "seys", "SYEH-teh".
• Nueve: the v is said like a soft b.

How to learn them

1. Learn 1 to 15 and the tens by heart. That is about two dozen words.
2. Write out 16 to 29 once, with the four accents.
3. Practise 31 to 99 with prices and ages: Tengo treinta y cuatro años, "I am thirty-four".

The numbers are in the most common Spanish words, and the Spanish course, Verbavia (our own course), teaches them in sentences, free on the web. For the other everyday set, see the days of the week in Spanish. French does something stranger with 70, 80 and 90: numbers 1 to 100 in French.

Sources

• The table of 1 to 100 is generated by rule by scripts/frequency_reference.py, which checks itself against a list of the forms most often got wrong before it writes anything.
• The counts are from OpenSubtitles 2018 (Lison, P. & Tiedemann, J., 2016, aclanthology.org) through Hermit Dave's FrequencyWords lists, content licensed CC BY-SA 4.0, github.com, and are printed from the script's output rather than typed.