diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index fa654dc67..3e8501b2f 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -18,7 +18,6 @@ tqdm>=4.38.0,<5.0.0
 pydantic>=1.7.4,!=1.8,!=1.8.1,<1.10.0
 jinja2
 langcodes>=3.2.0,<4.0.0
-polyleven>=0.7,<1.0
 # Official Python utilities
 setuptools
 packaging>=20.0
diff --git a/setup.cfg b/setup.cfg
index 2bb04e078..2dc5e7042 100644
--- a/setup.cfg
+++ b/setup.cfg
@@ -58,7 +58,6 @@ install_requires =
     requests>=2.13.0,<3.0.0
     pydantic>=1.7.4,!=1.8,!=1.8.1,<1.10.0
     jinja2
-    polyleven>=0.7,<1.0
     # Official Python utilities
     setuptools
     packaging>=20.0
diff --git a/spacy/matcher/matcher.pyx b/spacy/matcher/matcher.pyx
index 38be8170c..b0c02aa07 100644
--- a/spacy/matcher/matcher.pyx
+++ b/spacy/matcher/matcher.pyx
@@ -10,7 +10,6 @@ from murmurhash.mrmr cimport hash64
 import re
 import srsly
 import warnings
-from polyleven import levenshtein
 
 from ..typedefs cimport attr_t
 from ..structs cimport TokenC
@@ -26,6 +25,8 @@ from ..errors import Errors, MatchPatternError, Warnings
 from ..strings import get_string_id
 from ..attrs import IDS
 
+from .levenshtein import levenshtein
+
 
 DEF PADDING = 5