diff --git a/tokenizers/src/pre_tokenizers/byte_level.rs b/tokenizers/src/pre_tokenizers/byte_level.rs
index 6343bbd07..4c3cd5f9c 100644
--- a/tokenizers/src/pre_tokenizers/byte_level.rs
+++ b/tokenizers/src/pre_tokenizers/byte_level.rs
@@ -37,7 +37,7 @@ fn bytes_char() -> HashMap<u8, char> {
 lazy_static! {
     /// Regex that matches exactly one token.
     /// See https://github.com/openai/gpt-2/blob/master/src/encoder.py#L98
-    static ref RE: SysRegex = SysRegex::new(
+    static ref GPT2_RE: SysRegex = SysRegex::new(
         r"'s|'t|'re|'ve|'m|'ll|'d| ?\p{L}+| ?\p{N}+| ?[^\s\p{L}\p{N}]+|\s+(?!\S)|\s+"
     )
     .unwrap();
@@ -46,7 +46,7 @@ lazy_static! {
         bytes_char().into_iter().map(|(c, b)| (b, c)).collect();
 }
 
-#[derive(Copy, Clone, Debug, PartialEq, Eq)]
+#[derive(Clone, Debug, PartialEq, Eq)]
 /// Provides all the necessary steps to handle the BPE tokenization at the byte-level. Takes care
 /// of all the required processing steps to transform a UTF-8 string as needed before and after the
 /// BPE model does its job.
@@ -63,18 +63,26 @@ pub struct ByteLevel {
     /// Set it to False if you want to use your own splitting.
     #[serde(default = "default_true")]
     pub use_regex: bool,
+
+    #[serde(default = "default_none")]
+    pub custom_regex: Option<String>,
 }
 
 fn default_true() -> bool {
     true
 }
 
+fn default_none() -> Option<String> {
+    None
+}
+
 impl Default for ByteLevel {
     fn default() -> Self {
         Self {
             add_prefix_space: true,
             trim_offsets: true,
             use_regex: true,
+            custom_regex: None,
         }
     }
 }
@@ -85,6 +93,7 @@ impl ByteLevel {
             add_prefix_space,
             trim_offsets,
             use_regex,
+            custom_regex: None,
         }
     }
 
@@ -109,6 +118,12 @@ impl ByteLevel {
         self.use_regex = v;
         self
     }
+
+    #[must_use]
+    pub fn custom_regex(mut self, v: Option<String>) -> Self {
+        self.custom_regex = v;
+        self
+    }
 }
 
 /// As a `PreTokenizer`, `ByteLevel` is in charge of transforming all the unicode characters into
@@ -116,7 +131,14 @@ impl ByteLevel {
 // TODO: Give the ability to modify this regex
 impl PreTokenizer for ByteLevel {
     fn pre_tokenize(&self, pretokenized: &mut PreTokenizedString) -> Result<()> {
-        let re_ref: &SysRegex = &RE;
+        let custom_regex = match &self.custom_regex {
+            Some(s) => Some(SysRegex::new(&s)?),
+            None => None,
+        };
+        let re_ref: &SysRegex = match &custom_regex {
+            Some(custom_regex) => &custom_regex,
+            None => &GPT2_RE,
+        };
         pretokenized.split(|_, mut normalized| {
             if self.add_prefix_space && !normalized.get().starts_with(' ') {
                 normalized.prepend(" ");
@@ -269,6 +291,34 @@ mod tests {
         );
     }
 
+    #[test]
+    fn pre_tokenization_custom_regex() {
+        let bytelevel = ByteLevel::default()
+            .custom_regex(Some(r"'(?i:[sdmt]|ll|ve|re)|[^\r\n\p{L}\p{N}]?+\p{L}+|\p{N}{1,3}| ?[^\s\p{L}\p{N}]++[\r\n]*|\s*[\r\n]|\s+(?!\S)|\s+".into()))
+            .add_prefix_space(false);
+        let mut pretokenized: PreTokenizedString = "Hello my friend, how is your day going?".into();
+        bytelevel.pre_tokenize(&mut pretokenized).unwrap();
+        assert_eq!(
+            pretokenized
+                .get_splits(OffsetReferential::Original, OffsetType::Byte)
+                .into_iter()
+                .map(|(s, o, _)| (s, o))
+                .collect::<Vec<_>>(),
+            vec![
+                ("Hello", (0, 5)),
+                ("Ġmy", (5, 8)),
+                ("Ġfriend", (8, 15)),
+                (",", (15, 16)),
+                ("Ġhow", (16, 20)),
+                ("Ġis", (20, 23)),
+                ("Ġyour", (23, 28)),
+                ("Ġday", (28, 32)),
+                ("Ġgoing", (32, 38)),
+                ("?", (38, 39))
+            ]
+        );
+    }
+
     #[test]
     fn pre_tokenization_no_regex() {
         let bytelevel = ByteLevel::default().use_regex(false);
diff --git a/tokenizers/src/processors/sequence.rs b/tokenizers/src/processors/sequence.rs
index 66c670ad8..cc285c5f4 100644
--- a/tokenizers/src/processors/sequence.rs
+++ b/tokenizers/src/processors/sequence.rs
@@ -64,7 +64,7 @@ mod tests {
         );
 
         let bytelevel = ByteLevel::default().trim_offsets(true);
-        let sequence = Sequence::new(vec![PostProcessorWrapper::ByteLevel(bytelevel)]);
+        let sequence = Sequence::new(vec![PostProcessorWrapper::ByteLevel(bytelevel.clone())]);
         let expected = Encoding::new(
             vec![0; 5],
             vec![0; 5],
diff --git a/tokenizers/tests/serialization.rs b/tokenizers/tests/serialization.rs
index 54fa9053d..08d711153 100644
--- a/tokenizers/tests/serialization.rs
+++ b/tokenizers/tests/serialization.rs
@@ -173,7 +173,7 @@ fn decoders() {
     let byte_level_ser = serde_json::to_string(&byte_level).unwrap();
     assert_eq!(
         byte_level_ser,
-        r#"{"type":"ByteLevel","add_prefix_space":true,"trim_offsets":true,"use_regex":true}"#
+        r#"{"type":"ByteLevel","add_prefix_space":true,"trim_offsets":true,"use_regex":true,"custom_regex":null}"#
     );
     serde_json::from_str::<ByteLevel>(&byte_level_ser).unwrap();
     let byte_level_wrapper: DecoderWrapper = serde_json::from_str(&byte_level_ser).unwrap();