German Numbers 1-100 (and Beyond): The Complete Chart

German numbers 1-20: the words you memorize

These twenty-one words are the entire vocabulary. Every German number below a million is built by gluing them together. Capitals in the "sounds like" column mark the stressed syllable.

From 13 to 19, German does what English does with thirteen: unit in front of the ten. Only two change shape, and those two deserve a bookmark, sechzehn and siebzehn.

The reversal rule: why 21 is "one-and-twenty"

One fact makes German numbers feel odd to English speakers: from 21 up, German says the units before the tens. So 21 is einundzwanzig, literally "one-and-twenty", and 47 is siebenundvierzig, "seven-and-forty". Small digit, then und (and), then the big one, all closed up as a single word.

The formula: unit + und + ten, written as ONE word.

English used to work this way too. "Sing a Song of Sixpence" still has four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie, in print in that form since roughly 1780, and older English said five and twenty past two. The pattern isn't foreign to English, just retired.

It trips up native speakers too

German children struggle with it as well, which should take some pressure off you. Researchers call it the inversion property: in one translingual study, about half the number-writing errors of German-speaking first-graders came from inversion, against almost none among Japanese-speaking children (Frontiers in Psychology, 2015). Adults slip as well, and German has a word for it, der Zahlendreher, the "number-flipper".

A habit that works: hold the first word you hear, wait for the ten, then flip. It feels laborious for a week, then stops feeling like anything. If that sounds rough, French numbers want you to hear 97 as "four-twenties-seventeen".

German numbers 21-100: the full reference table

First the tens. Eight words, and three of them bend their spelling.

In northern standard German that -ig ending is a soft "ikh"; in the south and in Austria you'll hear a clean "ik". Both are normal.

Now every number from 21 to 99. Find your unit digit on the left, then read across to the ten you want.

Look at sechsundsechzig (66) and siebenundsiebzig (77): the same word twice, once whole and once trimmed. That teaches the next section better than any rule.

Five spelling traps in German numbers

Each of these has caught a learner writing out a date or a cheque. Fix them now and your written German numbers will look native.

1. However long it grows, it stays one word. German writes any number below a million closed up. 125 is einhundertfünfundzwanzig; 1965 is eintausendneunhundertfünfundsechzig, Duden's own example of the rule (Duden: Schreibung von Zahlen). From a million up it breaks apart, because Million and Milliarde are capitalized nouns: zwei Millionen einhundertzwanzigtausendvierhundertneunzehn (2,120,419).

2. eins loses its s inside a compound. On its own, one is eins. Inside a bigger number it becomes ein-: einundzwanzig (21), einhundert (100), eintausend (1,000). "Einsundzwanzig" is the most common beginner slip on this page.

3. sechs drops its s in sechzehn and sechzig. In those two words only (Wiktionary: sechzehn). In the units slot the s stays put: sechsundzwanzig (26), sechsundsechzig (66), sechshundert (600).

4. sieben drops its -en in siebzehn and siebzig. Same rule, same two positions. Everywhere else it keeps the full form: siebenundvierzig (47), siebenundsiebzig (77), siebenhundert (700).

5. dreißig is the only ten with ß. The others all close with -zig: zwanzig, vierzig, fünfzig, sechzig, siebzig, achtzig, neunzig. Thirty stands alone as dreißig. Swiss German writes dreissig, since ß isn't used there.

eins, ein, or eine?

One is the only German number that changes shape in front of a noun, where it behaves exactly like the indefinite article "a".

One o'clock follows the noun rule, not the counting rule, because Uhr is sitting right there: Es ist ein Uhr, never "eins Uhr".

German numbers pronunciation: five sounds that do the work

German spelling is reliable, so five rules cover nearly everything above.

ei says "eye", ie says "ee". The most useful reading rule in German, and the numbers hand it to you free: drei rhymes with "eye", vier rhymes with "ear". The trick: pronounce the second letter's English name. In ei that's I; in ie that's E.

z is "ts", always. Never a buzzing English z. Zwei is "tsvy", zehn is "tsayn", zwanzig opens and closes on the same "ts". Say the end of "cats", then slide into the number.

ü is "ee" with rounded lips. For fünf, set your mouth as if to whistle, then say "ee" without moving your lips. English has no such vowel.

ch has two settings. After a, o or u it's the scraped sound in Bach, so acht is "akht". After e or i it goes soft and breathy, close to the h in huge, and that's the ch in sechzehn and sechzig.

r melts at the end of a syllable. In vier it isn't rolled, it slides into a short "uh", landing near "fee-uh". At the start of a syllable, as in drei, it's made far back, where you gargle.

One habit worth stealing: Germans often say zwo for zwei on the phone, over the radio, and in station announcements, because zwei and drei blur on a bad line. It started with early telephone traffic and stuck.

Hundreds, thousands, and the Milliarde trap

Past 100, German numbers keep assembling from the same pieces: thousands, then hundreds, then the final two digits flipped as usual.

Those last two rows hide the most expensive false friend in German.

• German Milliarde = English billion (10⁹)
• German Billion = English trillion (10¹²)

German runs on the long scale, where each name is a million times the one before. A report saying eine Billion Euro means a trillion euros, a thousand times what an English speaker reading "billion" would assume. Translators publish this mistake in print with some regularity.

Million, Milliarde and Billion are feminine nouns: they take eine, they take a capital letter, and they pluralize (zwei Millionen, drei Milliarden).

Commas and periods swap places

German writes decimals with a comma and thousands with a period or a narrow space, the reverse of English. German 1.234,56 is English 1,234.56, and a tag reading 2,50 € means two euros fifty, not two hundred fifty.

Ordinal numbers in German: erste, zweite, dritte

Ordinals answer "which one in the row". German builds them from two endings and three irregulars, which makes them easier than the cardinals.

The rule: add -te up to 19, add -ste from 20 upward. Then treat the result like any adjective, so the ending shifts with the noun: der erste Tag (the first day), am ersten Tag (on the first day).

That period in the left column isn't decoration. German marks an ordinal with a period after the numeral, where English tacks on -st or -th. So 1. reads erste, and the date 3. Oktober reads der dritte Oktober. Dates run day first: 03.10.2026 is 3 October 2026, and "on 3 October" is am dritten Oktober.

Using German numbers today: prices, age, phone, time

You have enough now for four everyday situations. Say each one out loud.

Prices. Euros first, then cents, nothing in between. 2,50 € is zwei Euro fünfzig; 12,99 € is zwölf Euro neunundneunzig. After a number, Euro and Cent never take a plural ending: drei Euro, fünfzig Cent. Ask with Was kostet das? (what does that cost?).

Age. Ich bin dreißig Jahre alt is "I'm thirty years old", and shortening it to Ich bin dreißig is just as normal. Ask a friend Wie alt bist du?

Phone numbers. Germans read them digit by digit in small groups, and this is where zwo earns its keep: 0176 234 5678 is null eins sieben sechs, zwo drei vier, fünf sechs sieben acht.

Time. Wie spät ist es? asks the time. Quarter past and quarter to behave like English: Viertel nach drei (3:15), Viertel vor drei (2:45). But halb points forward. Halb drei is 2:30, halfway to three, not half past three. Miss that and you arrive an hour late.

Once these feel automatic, keep building on the German hub. For the same charts in a language that leaves the digits in order, Spanish numbers run left to right like English, part of why Spanish sits near the top of most easiest languages to learn lists.