diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index 3f6e3c421..a13f6d7e4 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -3,11 +3,11 @@
 # of our tools is stable
 # NOTE: hard-pinning (==) here gets relaxed to >= in pyproject.toml
 # NOTE: This list is currently duplicated in pyproject.toml
-lxml==4.9.3
-booleanOperations==0.9.0
-defcon[lxml,pens]==0.10.3
-fontMath==0.9.3
-fontTools[unicode,woff,lxml,ufo]==4.43.0
-tqdm==4.66.1
-ufonormalizer==0.6.1
-ufoProcessor==1.13.1
+lxml>=4.9.3
+booleanOperations>=0.9.0
+defcon[lxml,pens]>=0.10.3
+fontMath>=0.9.3
+fontTools[unicode,woff,lxml,ufo]>=4.43.0
+tqdm>=4.66.1
+ufonormalizer>=0.6.1
+ufoProcessor>=1.13.1