unicode-rbnf
Rule-based number formatting using Unicode CLDR data
Decision gist · record as of 2026-08-14
Yes, if you need multilingual number-to-text conversion. The package is actively maintained, has no dependencies, installs easily, and covers a wide range of locales and formatting purposes. It is still in alpha, so some advanced RBNF features are not yet implemented—verify that the specific locales and formatting modes you need are supported before committing to production use.AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page — verify before relying
Before you install
- Requires Python 3.8 or later.
- Low install friction; pure Python wheel with no runtime dependencies.
- Actively maintained with recent releases; currently at alpha status (Development Status :: 3 - Alpha).
License · maintenance · safety
MIT (permissive) — MIT license (permissive); you can use, modify, and distribute this package freely in commercial and private projects with minimal restrictions.
last release 2025-10-07 (311 days) · last repo commit 2026-03-05 · 7 stars
0 known vulnerabilities (OSV.dev, 2026-08-14) · 216,485 downloads/mo, #9,377 on PyPI
Alternatives
Verify before relying
from unicode_rbnf import RbnfEngine
engine = RbnfEngine.for_language("en")
result = engine.format_number(1234)
print(result.text) # "one thousand two hundred thirty-four"- Whether all CLDR locales listed in the upstream repository are fully supported or if some have partial/incomplete implementations.
- Performance characteristics when formatting very large numbers or when instantiating engines for many locales in sequence.
- Whether the package handles edge cases like very large integers, scientific notation inputs, or malformed locale strings gracefully.
What it is and what it does
Unicode RBNF is a pure Python library that converts numbers into their spelled-out text equivalents using Unicode Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR) rules. It supports a large number of locales and multiple formatting purposes—cardinal numbers, ordinals, years, and others depending on what the locale defines. The engine returns a result object containing the primary text plus a dictionary of all available ruleset variants, which is useful for languages with grammatical variations like gender, case, or number agreement.
The library implements core RBNF features including literal text, quotient and remainder substitution, optional substitution, rule substitution and replacement, and special rules for negative numbers, improper fractions, NaN, and infinity. It does not yet support proper fractions, preceding remainder substitution, number format strings, decimal format patterns, or plural replacements. With no external dependencies and low install friction, it integrates easily into projects that need multilingual number-to-text conversion.
Use it for
- Convert numeric values to words for accessibility features in applications serving multiple languages.
- Generate human-readable number spellings for formal documents, invoices, or legal text in locale-specific formats.
- Format numbers as ordinals (1st, 2nd, 11th) or years (nineteen ninety-nine) for display in multilingual UIs.
- Support gender and case agreement in languages where number words inflect based on grammatical properties.
- Build chatbots or voice interfaces that need to speak numbers naturally in different languages and contexts.
Worth the install?
AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page. Verify before relying on it.
Yes, if you need multilingual number-to-text conversion.
The package is actively maintained, has no dependencies, installs easily, and covers a wide range of locales and formatting purposes. It is still in alpha, so some advanced RBNF features are not yet implemented—verify that the specific locales and formatting modes you need are supported before committing to production use.
Install
unicode-rbnf on PyPI
Before you install
Low install friction; pure Python wheel with no runtime dependencies. Actively maintained with recent releases; currently at alpha status (Development Status :: 3 - Alpha).
Requires Python 3.8 or later.
License in practice
MIT license (permissive); you can use, modify, and distribute this package freely in commercial and private projects with minimal restrictions.
Quickstart
from unicode_rbnf import RbnfEngine
engine = RbnfEngine.for_language("en")
result = engine.format_number(1234)
print(result.text) # "one thousand two hundred thirty-four"Verify before relying
- Whether all CLDR locales listed in the upstream repository are fully supported or if some have partial/incomplete implementations.
- Performance characteristics when formatting very large numbers or when instantiating engines for many locales in sequence.
- Whether the package handles edge cases like very large integers, scientific notation inputs, or malformed locale strings gracefully.
Package facts
| License | MIT permissive |
| Python support | Supports the current Python release >=3.8.0 |
| Install friction | Low. Pure-Python wheel |
| Runtime dependencies | None |
| Maintenance | Actively maintained 311 days since the last release |
| Last repo commit | |
| First released | |
| Downloads | 216,485 / month, #9,377 on PyPI 30-day window, as of 2026-08-14 |
| Known vulnerabilities | None known OSV.dev, checked 2026-08-14 |
| Classifiers | Development Status :: 3 - AlphaIntended Audience :: DevelopersLicense :: OSI Approved :: MIT LicenseProgramming Language :: Python :: 3.10Programming Language :: Python :: 3.11Programming Language :: Python :: 3.12Programming Language :: Python :: 3.13Programming Language :: Python :: 3.8Programming Language :: Python :: 3.9Topic :: Text Processing :: Linguistic |
Evidence: unicode_rbnf-2.4.0-py3-none-any.whl
Tags
Let your AI agent find packages like this
Example. Real query, live index.
You found this page by searching. An agent finds it by wishing: SkillFed indexes 14,416 PyPI packages by what they can do, searchable in plain language.
wish › “spell out numbers multilingual”
- unicode-rbnfConverts numbers to spelled-out text in multiple languages and…
- indic-numtowordsConverts non-negative integers to their word representations in…
- pyspellcheckerDetects misspelled words and suggests corrections using Levenshtein…
Give your agent the search over MCP, or paste the wish link into any chat.
More Linguistic packages
Detects and normalizes text encoding from unknown or ambiguous sources, supporting all IANA character sets that Python's core library provides codecs for, with the ability to register custom codecs.
tiktoken is a fast BPE tokenizer that converts text into token sequences compatible with OpenAI models, supporting multiple encoding schemes including o200k_base and model-specific encodings.
Install it if you work with OpenAI APIs or need to understand token boundaries in GPT-family models.
Detects character encoding and language in byte sequences with high accuracy, supporting 99 encodings and returning confidence scores, language tags, and MIME types.
Install it if you need to detect character encoding or language in byte data; the rewrite makes it substantially faster and more accurate than its predecessors.
Converts Unicode text to ASCII by transliterating non-ASCII characters into their closest ASCII equivalents, with no runtime dependencies.
However, if transliteration quality or ongoing maintenance matters, consider unidecode instead despite its GPL-only license.
Lark is a parsing library that builds abstract syntax trees from context-free grammars, supporting multiple parsing algorithms (Earley, LALR(1), CYK) with automatic line and column tracking.
Python bindings to the tree-sitter parsing library, enabling incremental parsing and syntax tree analysis for source code.
See also text2digits · number-parser · word2number · num2words · text2num · inflect · weblate-language-data · lexid · language-data · recognizers-text-number