diff --git a/setup.cfg b/setup.cfg
index 01b12c049..da14a6c8d 100644
--- a/setup.cfg
+++ b/setup.cfg
@@ -32,11 +32,13 @@ project_urls =
 zip_safe = false
 include_package_data = true
 python_requires = >=3.6
-# NOTE: setup_requires no longer used and will be removed in spaCy v4
+# NOTE: This section is superseded by pyproject.toml will be removed in spaCy v4
 setup_requires =
     cython>=0.25,<3.0
-    numpy>=1.15.0; python_version < "3.9"
-    numpy>=1.25.0; python_version >= "3.9"
+    # The newest supported pip for python 3.6 has bugs related to markers in
+    # this section, so this does not contain the same constraints as
+    # pyproject.toml
+    numpy>=1.15.0
     # We also need our Cython packages here to compile against
     cymem>=2.0.2,<2.1.0
     preshed>=3.0.2,<3.1.0