Blog/June 5, 2026
Russian Numbers: How to Count, and the Case Trap Nobody Warns You About
Russian numbers from 0 to a million, how to build any number in between, and the one rule that trips up every learner: how numbers change the noun that follows them.
Russian numbers are friendlier than they look. The words are regular enough that once you know zero through ten, you can read most of the rest on sight. The genuinely tricky part isn't the numbers themselves, it's what they do to the noun that follows. Get the words first, then meet the famous case trap.
Zero to ten
Start here. These eleven words are the seeds of every other number.
| # | Russian | Sounds like |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | ноль | nol |
| 1 | один | odin |
| 2 | два | dva |
| 3 | три | tri |
| 4 | четыре | chetyre |
| 5 | пять | pyat |
| 6 | шесть | shest |
| 7 | семь | sem |
| 8 | восемь | vosem |
| 9 | девять | devyat |
| 10 | десять | desyat |
Eleven to nineteen
The teens are wonderfully regular: take the unit and bolt on -надцать (literally "on ten"). пять → пятнадцать, шесть → шестнадцать, and so on.
| # | Russian | # | Russian |
|---|---|---|---|
| 11 | одиннадцать | 16 | шестнадцать |
| 12 | двенадцать | 17 | семнадцать |
| 13 | тринадцать | 18 | восемнадцать |
| 14 | четырнадцать | 19 | девятнадцать |
| 15 | пятнадцать |
Tens and hundreds
The tens mostly follow a pattern, with two odd ones out worth memorizing: сорок (40) and девяносто (90) look nothing like their units.
| Tens | Russian | Hundreds | Russian |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20 | двадцать | 100 | сто |
| 30 | тридцать | 200 | двести |
| 40 | сорок | 300 | триста |
| 50 | пятьдесят | 400 | четыреста |
| 60 | шестьдесят | 500 | пятьсот |
| 70 | семьдесят | 600 | шестьсот |
| 80 | восемьдесят | 700 | семьсот |
| 90 | девяносто | 800 | восемьсот |
| 100 | сто | 900 | девятьсот |
Above that: тысяча (tysyacha, 1,000), миллион (million), миллиард (milliard, a billion).
Building bigger numbers
Russian stacks numbers left to right with no "and" and no hyphens, just spaces. You say the parts in order, biggest first:
- 245 = двести сорок пять (two-hundred forty five)
- 1 999 = тысяча девятьсот девяносто девять
- 3 021 = три тысячи двадцать один
If you can say the pieces, you can say the whole number. There's nothing new to learn, only assembly.
The case trap: numbers change the noun
Here's the part no beginner guide should skip. In Russian, a number doesn't just sit in front of a noun; it dictates the form of that noun. Three groups, three behaviours:
| Last word of the number | The noun goes into | Example |
|---|---|---|
| 1 (один) | nominative singular | один рубль |
| 2, 3, 4 | genitive singular | два рубля |
| 5–20, 0 | genitive plural | пять рублей |
So "one rouble" is один рубль, "two roubles" is два рубля, and "five roubles" is пять рублей, with the noun shifting under your feet each time. (If "genitive" is new, the genitive case chapter explains it, and the Russian cases post gives the big picture.)
Two things make this manageable:
Follow the last word. In a compound number, only the final word matters. So:
- двадцать один рубль (nominative singular, because it ends in один)
- двадцать два рубля (genitive singular)
- двадцать пять рублей (genitive plural)
Watch the teens. The numbers 11–19 always take the genitive plural, even though some end in a "one/two/three/four" sound: одиннадцать рублей, not *одиннадцать рубль.
One more wrinkle: один and два have gender
Two of the numbers agree with the noun's gender, like adjectives do:
- один changes to одна (feminine) and одно (neuter): один стол, одна книга, одно окно.
- два becomes две before a feminine noun: два стола but две книги.
Three and up don't bother with gender, so this only affects "1" and "2."
Where to go next
The fastest way to internalize all of this is to see numbers spelled out and to drill them. Our numbers page has a converter that turns any figure into its full Russian spelling, plus reference tables for units, teens, tens, hundreds, and the big scales, all with the agreement forms shown side by side.
Learn zero to ten, the two odd tens (сорок, девяносто), and the three-group case rule. With those in hand, you can count your way through almost any real Russian sentence.