diff --git a/Cargo.toml b/Cargo.toml
index 312f46d..cd07c99 100644
--- a/Cargo.toml
+++ b/Cargo.toml
@@ -3,6 +3,7 @@
 members = [
     "crates/*",
     "crates/bpe/benchmarks",
+    "crates/bpe/bindings/python",
     "crates/bpe/tests",
 ]
 resolver = "2"
@@ -11,4 +12,4 @@ resolver = "2"
 debug = true
 
 [profile.release]
-debug = true
\ No newline at end of file
+debug = true
diff --git a/crates/bpe-openai/src/lib.rs b/crates/bpe-openai/src/lib.rs
index 385749e..b4c4a78 100644
--- a/crates/bpe-openai/src/lib.rs
+++ b/crates/bpe-openai/src/lib.rs
@@ -47,6 +47,7 @@ pub use bpe::*;
 /// to the regex and underlying byte-pair encoding if needed. Note that using
 /// the byte-pair encoding directly does not take the regex into account and
 /// may result in output that differs from tiktoken.
+#[derive(Clone)]
 pub struct Tokenizer {
     /// The byte-pair encoding for this tokenizer.
     pub bpe: BytePairEncoding,
@@ -54,6 +55,7 @@ pub struct Tokenizer {
     pub pre: Option<Pretokenizer>,
 }
 
+#[derive(Clone)]
 pub struct Pretokenizer {
     /// The pattern regex used to split the input.
     pat: Regex,
diff --git a/crates/bpe/bindings/python/.gitignore b/crates/bpe/bindings/python/.gitignore
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..844bc82
--- /dev/null
+++ b/crates/bpe/bindings/python/.gitignore
@@ -0,0 +1,75 @@
+/target
+
+# Byte-compiled / optimized / DLL files
+__pycache__/
+.pytest_cache/
+*.py[cod]
+
+# C extensions
+*.so
+
+# Distribution / packaging
+.Python
+.venv/
+env/
+bin/
+build/
+develop-eggs/
+dist/
+eggs/
+lib/
+lib64/
+parts/
+sdist/
+var/
+include/
+man/
+venv/
+*.egg-info/
+.installed.cfg
+*.egg
+
+# Installer logs
+pip-log.txt
+pip-delete-this-directory.txt
+pip-selfcheck.json
+
+# Unit test / coverage reports
+htmlcov/
+.tox/
+.coverage
+.cache
+nosetests.xml
+coverage.xml
+
+# Translations
+*.mo
+
+# Mr Developer
+.mr.developer.cfg
+.project
+.pydevproject
+
+# Rope
+.ropeproject
+
+# Django stuff:
+*.log
+*.pot
+
+.DS_Store
+
+# Sphinx documentation
+docs/_build/
+
+# PyCharm
+.idea/
+
+# VSCode
+.vscode/
+
+# Pyenv
+.python-version
+
+# UV
+uv.lock
diff --git a/crates/bpe/bindings/python/Cargo.toml b/crates/bpe/bindings/python/Cargo.toml
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..11e7ec8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/crates/bpe/bindings/python/Cargo.toml
@@ -0,0 +1,13 @@
+[package]
+name = "python-bpe"
+version = "0.1.0"
+edition = "2021"
+
+[lib]
+name = "bpe"
+crate-type = ["cdylib"]
+
+[dependencies]
+bpe = { version = "0.2", path = "../../../bpe" }
+bpe-openai = { version = "0.2", path = "../../../bpe-openai" }
+pyo3 = "0.23.5"
diff --git a/crates/bpe/bindings/python/pyproject.toml b/crates/bpe/bindings/python/pyproject.toml
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0709030
--- /dev/null
+++ b/crates/bpe/bindings/python/pyproject.toml
@@ -0,0 +1,27 @@
+[build-system]
+requires = ["maturin>=1.8,<2.0"]
+build-backend = "maturin"
+
+[project]
+name = "bpe"
+requires-python = ">=3.8"
+classifiers = [
+    "Development Status :: 5 - Production/Stable",
+    "Intended Audience :: Developers",
+    "Intended Audience :: Science/Research",
+    "License :: OSI Approved :: MIT License",
+    "Operating System :: OS Independent",
+    "Programming Language :: Python :: Implementation :: CPython",
+    "Programming Language :: Python :: Implementation :: PyPy",
+    "Topic :: Scientific/Engineering :: Artificial Intelligence",
+]
+dynamic = ["version"]
+
+[tool.maturin]
+features = ["pyo3/extension-module"]
+
+[dependency-groups]
+dev = [
+    "maturin>=1.8.2",
+    "pip>=25.0.1",
+]
diff --git a/crates/bpe/bindings/python/src/lib.rs b/crates/bpe/bindings/python/src/lib.rs
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6577606
--- /dev/null
+++ b/crates/bpe/bindings/python/src/lib.rs
@@ -0,0 +1,67 @@
+use std::borrow::Cow;
+
+use pyo3::prelude::*;
+
+#[pymodule]
+mod bpe {
+    use super::*;
+
+    #[pyclass]
+    struct BytePairEncoding(&'static ::bpe::byte_pair_encoding::BytePairEncoding);
+
+    #[pymethods]
+    impl BytePairEncoding {
+        fn count(&self, input: &[u8]) -> usize {
+            self.0.count(input)
+        }
+
+        fn encode_via_backtracking(&self, input: &[u8]) -> Vec<u32> {
+            self.0.encode_via_backtracking(input)
+        }
+
+        fn decode_tokens(&self, tokens: Vec<u32>) -> Vec<u8> {
+            self.0.decode_tokens(&tokens)
+        }
+    }
+
+    #[pymodule]
+    mod openai {
+        use super::*;
+
+        #[pyclass]
+        struct Tokenizer(&'static ::bpe_openai::Tokenizer);
+
+        #[pymethods]
+        impl Tokenizer {
+            fn count(&self, input: &str) -> usize {
+                self.0.count(&input)
+            }
+
+            fn count_till_limit(&self, input: Cow<str>, limit: usize) -> Option<usize> {
+                self.0.count_till_limit(&input, limit)
+            }
+
+            fn encode(&self, input: Cow<str>) -> Vec<u32> {
+                self.0.encode(&input)
+            }
+
+            fn decode(&self, tokens: Vec<u32>) -> Option<String> {
+                self.0.decode(&tokens)
+            }
+
+            fn bpe(&self) -> BytePairEncoding {
+                BytePairEncoding(&self.0.bpe)
+            }
+        }
+
+        #[pyfunction]
+        fn cl100k_base() -> PyResult<Tokenizer> {
+            Ok(Tokenizer(::bpe_openai::cl100k_base()))
+        }
+
+        #[pyfunction]
+        fn o200k_base() -> PyResult<Tokenizer> {
+            Ok(Tokenizer(::bpe_openai::o200k_base()))
+        }
+    }
+}
diff --git a/crates/bpe/bindings/python/test.py b/crates/bpe/bindings/python/test.py
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..b9c36bf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/crates/bpe/bindings/python/test.py
@@ -0,0 +1,18 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env python3
+
+import bpe
+
+tok = bpe.openai.cl100k_base()
+
+## Use tokenizer
+
+enc = tok.encode("Hello, world!")
+print(enc)
+cnt = tok.count("Hello, world!")
+print(cnt)
+dec = tok.decode(enc)
+print(dec)
+
+## Use underlying BPE instance
+
+bpe = tok.bpe()
diff --git a/crates/bpe/src/byte_pair_encoding.rs b/crates/bpe/src/byte_pair_encoding.rs
index 9c5a014..5f34a51 100644
--- a/crates/bpe/src/byte_pair_encoding.rs
+++ b/crates/bpe/src/byte_pair_encoding.rs
@@ -15,7 +15,7 @@ use crate::bitfield::BitField;
 /// Representation of the byte pair dictionary.
 /// This struct provides various conversions.
 /// We put all of them into a single struct so that they can be reused by different implementations.
-#[derive(Serialize, Deserialize)]
+#[derive(Clone, Serialize, Deserialize)]
 pub struct BytePairEncoding {
     /// All the decoded tokens concatenated into
     all_tokens: Vec<u8>,

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