diff --git a/pkgs/development/python-modules/transformers/default.nix b/pkgs/development/python-modules/transformers/default.nix
index 2eaf4176fea1..ee288f7626b8 100644
--- a/pkgs/development/python-modules/transformers/default.nix
+++ b/pkgs/development/python-modules/transformers/default.nix
@@ -41,8 +41,7 @@ buildPythonPackage rec {
   doCheck = false;
 
   postPatch = ''
-    substituteInPlace setup.py \
-      --replace "tokenizers == 0.9.4" "tokenizers"
+    sed -ri 's/tokenizers==[0-9.]+/tokenizers/g' setup.py
   '';
 
   pythonImportsCheck = [ "transformers" ];