Numbers in Portuguese: Counting in Portuguese from 1-100+ (2023)

If you want to learn how to count in Portuguese, you’re in the right place. This article will give you everything you need for a complete understanding of Portuguese numbers.

I’ll cover both cardinal and ordinal numbers (that is, both “one, two, three…” and “first, second, third…”), along with all the subtleties and irregularities that you need to know.

The goal? To give you a comprehensive guide to Portuguese numbers so that, by the time you’re done, you won’t have any questions left about numbers and counting in Portuguese!

Portuguese Numbers 1-10

If you’ve just started learning Portuguese, you don’t need to learn how to count to a million just yet.

So let’s leave the huge numbers until later, and start with the basics. The first ten numbers in Portuguese are:

• 1 –um/uma
• 2 –dois/duas
• 3 –três
• 4 –quatro
• 5 –cinco
• 6 –seis
• 7 –sete
• 8 –oito
• 9 –nove
• 10 –dez

As you can see “one” (um/uma) and “two” (dois/duas) have two versions. These are the masculine and feminine forms of the number, and they need to agree with the gender of the thing that’s being counted:

• comprei um limão– “I bought one lemon”
• tenho dois cachorros– “I have two dogs”
• você pode me passar uma taça” – “Can you pass me one cup?”
• te contei duas vezes já– “I already told you two times”

Note thatum/umacan mean “a” as well as “one”. Portuguese doesn’t distinguish between these two words like English does. So, for example, the first sentence above could also be translated as simply “I bought a lemon”.

Portuguese Numbers 11-19

Ready for round two? Here’s the next batch of Portuguese numbers you should learn:

• 11 –onze
• 12 –doze
• 13 –treze
• 14 –catorze
• 15 –quinze
• 16 –dezesseis/dezasseis
• 17 –dezessete/dezassete
• 18 –dezoito
• 19 –dezenove/dezanove

Pro tip: Where I’ve written two words for one number, it’s because the first version is used in Brazil and the second is used in Portugal. So, for example, Brazilians saydezesseiswhile Portuguese people saydezasseis.

To help you remember these, notice that the numbers 16 to 19 are formed using the same, simple pattern.

For exampledezesseisis just the combination ofdez(“ten”) andseis(“six”), with ane(“and”) in the middle. The only thing you need to remember is that Portuguese people change theeto ana(don’t ask me why), and thatdezoitois a slight exception because it drops theeentirely.

You may be wondering whydezesseisanddezessetehave that extrasin the middle. Why isn’t itdezeseisanddezesete?

It’s because of the rules of Portugues spelling and pronunciation.

Ansis normally pronounced like the English letter “s”, but when it comes between two vowels it’s pronounced like an English “z”. However, adouble sisalwayspronounced like an English “s”. So if you just wrotedezesete, you’d be changing thesinseteto sound like az.

By doubling it up todezessete, you make it clear that thesetestill sounds the same as if it were a separate word.

Portuguese numbers 20-100

Once you’ve learned the first nineteen numbers in Portuguese, it’s easy to learn the next eighty. All you need to do is remember the multiples of ten:

• 20 –vinte
• 30 –trinta
• 40 –quarenta
• 50 –cinquenta
• 60 –sessenta
• 70 –setenta
• 80 –oitenta
• 90 –noventa

These aren’t hard to learn, especially if you notice that all of them from 40 upwards end in-enta, and all of them exceptvintehave an obvious relationship with their root digit:oitoandoitenta.

Now, to say a number like 43, you pick the right multiple of ten (in this casequarenta), translate the number from the units column (in this casetrês), and join them together with ane–quarenta e três. Unlike withdezessete, you write this as three separate words. And Portuguese people don’t change theeto ana.

This pattern is the same for all numbers between twenty and ninety-nine. So all you need to know now is thatcemmeans “one hundred” – and you know how to count from 1 to 100 in Portuguese.

Check this table if you’re not sure:

Note that forallnumbers which end in one or two, you need to use the correct form ofum/umaordois/duas:

• Somos vinte e duas pessoas– “There are twenty-two of us.” (literally: “We’re twenty-two people.”)
• Li trinta e um livros esse ano já– “I’ve already read thirty-one books this year.”

The number zero, by the way, iszero. That one’s easy to remember!

“Cem” vs “Cento” in Portuguese

I told you thatcemmeans “one-hundred”, but this isn’t the full story. You actually only usecemwhen you haveexactlyone-hundred of something. If another number comes after thecem, you should instead usecento:

• 100 –cem
• 101 –centoe um/uma
• 138 –centoe trinta e oito

Makes sense?

If precision doesn’t matter, and you just want to say that you have “hundreds” of something, usecentenas:

• Recebemos centenas de ligações– “We received hundreds of phone calls”

Numbers up to 1,000 in Portuguese

Earlier, we learned the Portuguese words for the multiples of ten, which allowed us to say any number up to one hundred.

It’s time to level-up. This time, we must learn the Portuguese words for the multiples of 100. Once we’re done, we’ll know how to say any number up to one thousand!

The numbers 200, 300, etc. have masculine and feminine forms, meaning they must agree with the noun they appear next to. Masculine forms end in-osand feminine forms in-as:

• 200 –duzentos/duzentas
• 300 –trezentos/trezentas
• 400 –quatrocentos/quatrocentas
• 500 –quinhentos/quinhentas
• 600 –seiscentos/seiscentas
• 700 –setecentos/setecentas
• 800 –oitocentos/oitocentas
• 900 –novecentos/novecentas

As you can see, these generally follow the patternnumber + centos. E.g. nine-hundred isnove(nine) +centos/centas(hundreds). The only ones that don’t follow this pattern exactly areduzentos,trezentos, andquinhentos, but they’re not too far off.

Separate the hundreds, units, and tens portion of any number with ane:

• 121 –cento e vinte e um
• 487 –quatrocentos e oitenta e sete
• 701 –setecentos e um
• 811 –oitocentos e onze
• 940 –novecentos e quarenta

Numbers Above 1000 in Portuguese

It’s time to bring out the big guns.

Milmeans “(one) thousand” andum milhãomeans “one million”.Milhãobecomesmilhõesin the plural, whilemildoesn’t change. So you’d saydois mil(2,000) butdois milhões(2,000,000).

You don’t normally need anewhen linked hundreds and thousands, e.g.:

• 1,234 –mil duzentos e quatro
• 2,058 –dois mil cincuenta e oito

However, youdoneed to insert aneif the number is an exact multiple of one hundred:

• 1,200 –mil e duzentos
• 2,400 –dois mil e quatrocentos

Finally, you need anewhen linking thousands and units:

• 2,004 –dois mil e quatro
• 5,009 –cinco mil e nove

Also note that when usingmilhões, you don’t have “a million things” (um milhão coisas), you have “a millionofthings”:um milhãodecoisas.

What about numbers above one million, like a billion and a trillion?

Things might seem like they start to get complicated, but I’ll help you make sense out of them.

Millions and Billions (Long vs Short Scale Numbers) in Portuguese

You may know that “a billion” used to have a different meaning in British and American English. To Americans, a “billion” meant “one thousand million”, like it does today.

In Britain and most other English-speaking countries, a billion meant “onemillionmillion” – which today everyone (in the English-speaking world at least) calls a “trillion”.

Similarly, “a trillion” had its current meaning in the U.S. of “one million million”. Everywhere else it meant “onemillion millionmillion” – that’s a one with a whopping eighteen zeroes afterward.

At some point in the twentieth century, non-Americans gave up and started using “billion” and “trillion” in the American way. (We’re still waiting for Americans to return the favour and stop measuring temperature in Fahrenheit.) The “old” way is called thelong scalenumbering system, while the modern/American way is called theshort scale.

You may be wondering how any of this is relevant to Portuguese.

Well, in many languages they still use the long scale system, in which a billion and a million (actually their cognates in the local language) have twelve and eighteen zeros, respectively. So, for example, in Spanish abillónmeans 1,000,000,000,000.

Which one does Portuguese use? Most Portuguese-speaking countries use the long-scale system, with the exception of Brazil.

Soum bilhãomeans “1,000,000,000” in Brazil, but “1,000,000,000,000” in Portugal or Angola.

To add yet another complication,bilhãocan alternatively be spelledbilião. The former is more common in Brazil, while the latter is more common in Portugal.

Fun fact: you know how in English we have “a zillion” as a humourous way of saying “a very large number”? In Portuguese you can do the same thing withum zilhão.

Decimal Points and Commas in Portuguese Numbers

In English, we make long numbers more readable by putting a comma in between each group of three digits: e.g. one million is written “1,000,000”.

On the other hand, for fractional numbers, we separate the integer part from the rest using a dot (the “decimal point”): e.g. 3.14159.

In Portuguese, however, as in most European languages, they do things the other way around. Big numbers are split up using dots, and fractional numbers are written using a decimalcomma– thevírgula da casa decimal:

• A população do Brasil e 208.494.900
• O valor de pi é 3,1419

You could also use spaces instead of dots to split up a large number, although this is less common:

• A população do Brasil e 208 494 900

Vírgulameans “comma”, and a number like “2,34” would be read out loud asdois vírgula trinta e quatro.

This is me in July 2022, making the population of Brazil go up by one. It was my first nomadic move after living in the USA!

Names of Years in Portuguese.

In English, there are two ways to say “1999”. If you’re talking about the year, you’d say “nineteen ninety-nine”. In other cases where you’re just referring to the number, you’d say “one thousand, nine-hundred and ninety-nine”.

In Portuguese, to say the same of the year you just say the regular name of the number. So the year 1999 in Portuguese ismil novecentos, noventa e nove.

Ordinal Numbers in Portuguese

So far we’ve only looked atcardinal numbers– “one, two, three”, etc.

The other thing you need to know about is theordinal numbers– “first, second, third”, etc… Here they are:

• 1st –primeiro
• 2nd –segundo
• 3rd –terceiro
• 4th –quarto
• 5th –quinto
• 6th –sexto
• 7th –sétimo
• 8th –oitavo
• 9th –nono
• 10th –décimo

These words function like regular adjectives, meaning they need to agree in gender and number with the word they refer to:

• o primeiro homem– “the first man”
• a segunda pessoa– “the second person”
• os terceiros países– “the third countries”
• as quartas maçãs– “the fourth apples”

You also need to know the ordinal numbers for multiples of 10:

• 20th –vigésimo
• 30th –trigésimo
• 40th –quadragésimo
• 50th –quinquagésimo
• 60th –sexagésimo
• 70th –septuagésimo
• 80th –octogésimo
• 90th –nonagésimo
• 100th –centésimo

Then you can combine these words to get other numbers:

• 11th –décimo primeiro
• 34th –trigésimo quarto

Simple! However, when it comes to the bigger ordinal numbers, especially ones that are not exact multiples of ten, people tend to avoid them in informal speech, and instead use a cardinal number:

• Hoje foi o dia sessenta e sete da minha dieta– “Today was the 67th day (lit: day 67) of my diet”

“Meia” in Brazilian Portuguese

One final thing is worth knowing. In Brazil (but not so much in Portugal), you’ll often hear people saying the wordmeiawhen reading a list of numbers. This is an alternative way of saying “six”, and it comes frommeia dúzia– “half dozen”.

It’s like how in English we often say “oh” instead of “zero”, for example when reading out a phone number. Brazilians do the same, except they replaceseiswithmeia.

Phew, you’ve finally tackled this introduction to counting in Portuguese. You’re on the right track! If you want to learn the Portuguese numbers more quickly, you can take a leaf out of my book and useAnki’s spaced repetition system! It’s a fantastic way tolearn vocabulary more efficiently.

Let me know on Instagram (@irishpolyglot), TikTok (@irishpolyglot), or Twitter (@irishpolyglot) what method you will use!

If you’re ready to continue your Portuguese mission, check out one of these articles:

• How to Say “Hello” in Portuguese: “Olá!” (plus 15 More Ways!)
• 16 Free Online Portuguese Language Classes
• Rocket Languages Review: Can It Launch Your Language Skills To the Next Level?
• “I Love You” in Portuguese — Plus 50 More Romantic Portuguese Phrases
• Is Babbel Any Good for Language Learners? I Speak 4 Languages Fluently, Here’s What I Think [Babbel Review]