diff --git a/changelog/5905.bugfix.rst b/changelog/5905.bugfix.rst
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..4e4d3f0d70da
--- /dev/null
+++ b/changelog/5905.bugfix.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+Remove option ``token_pattern`` from ``CountVectorsFeaturizer``.
+Instead all tokenizers now have the option ``token_pattern``.
+If a regular expression is set, the tokenizer will apply the token pattern.
diff --git a/docs/nlu/components.rst b/docs/nlu/components.rst
index 06ed7274c391..08437b51ea27 100644
--- a/docs/nlu/components.rst
+++ b/docs/nlu/components.rst
@@ -182,6 +182,8 @@ WhitespaceTokenizer
           "intent_split_symbol": "_"
           # Text will be tokenized with case sensitive as default
           "case_sensitive": True
+          # Regular expression to detect tokens
+          "token_pattern": None
 
 
 JiebaTokenizer
@@ -210,6 +212,8 @@ JiebaTokenizer
           "intent_tokenization_flag": False
           # Symbol on which intent should be split
           "intent_split_symbol": "_"
+          # Regular expression to detect tokens
+          "token_pattern": None
 
 
 MitieTokenizer
@@ -229,6 +233,8 @@ MitieTokenizer
           "intent_tokenization_flag": False
           # Symbol on which intent should be split
           "intent_split_symbol": "_"
+          # Regular expression to detect tokens
+          "token_pattern": None
 
 SpacyTokenizer
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
@@ -248,6 +254,8 @@ SpacyTokenizer
           "intent_tokenization_flag": False
           # Symbol on which intent should be split
           "intent_split_symbol": "_"
+          # Regular expression to detect tokens
+          "token_pattern": None
 
 .. _ConveRTTokenizer:
 
@@ -282,6 +290,8 @@ ConveRTTokenizer
           "intent_split_symbol": "_"
           # Text will be tokenized with case sensitive as default
           "case_sensitive": True
+          # Regular expression to detect tokens
+          "token_pattern": None
 
 .. _LanguageModelTokenizer:
 
@@ -306,7 +316,6 @@ LanguageModelTokenizer
           "intent_split_symbol": "_"
 
 
-
 .. _text-featurizers:
 
 Text Featurizers
@@ -582,9 +591,6 @@ CountVectorsFeaturizer
          |                   |                         | n-grams at the edges of words are padded with space.         |
          |                   |                         | Valid values: 'word', 'char', 'char_wb'.                     |
          +-------------------+-------------------------+--------------------------------------------------------------+
-         | token_pattern     | r"(?u)\b\w\w+\b"        | Regular expression used to detect tokens.                    |
-         |                   |                         | Only used if 'analyzer' is set to 'word'.                    |
-         +-------------------+-------------------------+--------------------------------------------------------------+
          | strip_accents     | None                    | Remove accents during the pre-processing step.               |
          |                   |                         | Valid values: 'ascii', 'unicode', 'None'.                    |
          +-------------------+-------------------------+--------------------------------------------------------------+
diff --git a/rasa/nlu/featurizers/sparse_featurizer/count_vectors_featurizer.py b/rasa/nlu/featurizers/sparse_featurizer/count_vectors_featurizer.py
index e7fef6f46e32..1d1e08cc2c34 100644
--- a/rasa/nlu/featurizers/sparse_featurizer/count_vectors_featurizer.py
+++ b/rasa/nlu/featurizers/sparse_featurizer/count_vectors_featurizer.py
@@ -53,11 +53,6 @@ def required_components(cls) -> List[Type[Component]]:
         # 'char_wb' creates character n-grams inside word boundaries
         # n-grams at the edges of words are padded with space.
         "analyzer": "word",  # use 'char' or 'char_wb' for character
-        # regular expression for tokens
-        # only used if analyzer == 'word'
-        # WARNING this pattern is used during training
-        # but not currently used during inference!
-        "token_pattern": r"(?u)\b\w\w+\b",
         # remove accents during the preprocessing step
         "strip_accents": None,  # {'ascii', 'unicode', None}
         # list of stop words
@@ -95,9 +90,6 @@ def _load_count_vect_params(self) -> None:
         # set analyzer
         self.analyzer = self.component_config["analyzer"]
 
-        # regular expression for tokens
-        self.token_pattern = self.component_config["token_pattern"]
-
         # remove accents during the preprocessing step
         self.strip_accents = self.component_config["strip_accents"]
 
@@ -341,7 +333,6 @@ def _train_with_shared_vocab(self, attribute_texts: Dict[Text, List[Text]]):
 
         self.vectorizers = self._create_shared_vocab_vectorizers(
             {
-                "token_pattern": self.token_pattern,
                 "strip_accents": self.strip_accents,
                 "lowercase": self.lowercase,
                 "stop_words": self.stop_words,
@@ -375,7 +366,6 @@ def _train_with_independent_vocab(self, attribute_texts: Dict[Text, List[Text]])
 
         self.vectorizers = self._create_independent_vocab_vectorizers(
             {
-                "token_pattern": self.token_pattern,
                 "strip_accents": self.strip_accents,
                 "lowercase": self.lowercase,
                 "stop_words": self.stop_words,
@@ -605,7 +595,7 @@ def _create_shared_vocab_vectorizers(
         """Create vectorizers for all attributes with shared vocabulary"""
 
         shared_vectorizer = CountVectorizer(
-            token_pattern=parameters["token_pattern"],
+            token_pattern=r"(?u)\b\w+\b",
             strip_accents=parameters["strip_accents"],
             lowercase=parameters["lowercase"],
             stop_words=parameters["stop_words"],
@@ -637,7 +627,7 @@ def _create_independent_vocab_vectorizers(
             attribute_vocabulary = vocabulary[attribute] if vocabulary else None
 
             attribute_vectorizer = CountVectorizer(
-                token_pattern=parameters["token_pattern"],
+                token_pattern=r"(?u)\b\w+\b",
                 strip_accents=parameters["strip_accents"],
                 lowercase=parameters["lowercase"],
                 stop_words=parameters["stop_words"],
diff --git a/rasa/nlu/tokenizers/convert_tokenizer.py b/rasa/nlu/tokenizers/convert_tokenizer.py
index e4b63e60a6f8..acae4ade5130 100644
--- a/rasa/nlu/tokenizers/convert_tokenizer.py
+++ b/rasa/nlu/tokenizers/convert_tokenizer.py
@@ -26,6 +26,8 @@ class ConveRTTokenizer(WhitespaceTokenizer):
         "intent_tokenization_flag": False,
         # Symbol on which intent should be split
         "intent_split_symbol": "_",
+        # Regular expression to detect tokens
+        "token_pattern": None,
         # Text will be tokenized with case sensitive as default
         "case_sensitive": True,
     }
@@ -82,7 +84,8 @@ def tokenize(self, message: Message, attribute: Text) -> List[Token]:
 
         return tokens_out
 
-    def _clean_tokens(self, tokens: List[bytes]):
+    @staticmethod
+    def _clean_tokens(tokens: List[bytes]) -> List[Text]:
         """Encode tokens and remove special char added by ConveRT."""
 
         tokens = [string.decode("utf-8").replace("﹏", "") for string in tokens]
diff --git a/rasa/nlu/tokenizers/jieba_tokenizer.py b/rasa/nlu/tokenizers/jieba_tokenizer.py
index 59dd9425a404..ef034bde430f 100644
--- a/rasa/nlu/tokenizers/jieba_tokenizer.py
+++ b/rasa/nlu/tokenizers/jieba_tokenizer.py
@@ -28,6 +28,8 @@ class JiebaTokenizer(Tokenizer):
         "intent_tokenization_flag": False,
         # Symbol on which intent should be split
         "intent_split_symbol": "_",
+        # Regular expression to detect tokens
+        "token_pattern": None,
     }  # default don't load custom dictionary
 
     def __init__(self, component_config: Dict[Text, Any] = None) -> None:
@@ -69,7 +71,7 @@ def tokenize(self, message: Message, attribute: Text) -> List[Token]:
         tokenized = jieba.tokenize(text)
         tokens = [Token(word, start) for (word, start, end) in tokenized]
 
-        return tokens
+        return self._apply_token_pattern(tokens)
 
     @classmethod
     def load(
diff --git a/rasa/nlu/tokenizers/lm_tokenizer.py b/rasa/nlu/tokenizers/lm_tokenizer.py
index 56ac683ddf60..4edb431b5986 100644
--- a/rasa/nlu/tokenizers/lm_tokenizer.py
+++ b/rasa/nlu/tokenizers/lm_tokenizer.py
@@ -5,10 +5,7 @@
 from rasa.nlu.utils.hugging_face.hf_transformers import HFTransformersNLP
 from rasa.nlu.training_data import Message
 
-from rasa.nlu.constants import (
-    LANGUAGE_MODEL_DOCS,
-    TOKENS,
-)
+from rasa.nlu.constants import LANGUAGE_MODEL_DOCS, TOKENS
 
 
 class LanguageModelTokenizer(Tokenizer):
diff --git a/rasa/nlu/tokenizers/mitie_tokenizer.py b/rasa/nlu/tokenizers/mitie_tokenizer.py
index 054e3225fb10..376aa901fba0 100644
--- a/rasa/nlu/tokenizers/mitie_tokenizer.py
+++ b/rasa/nlu/tokenizers/mitie_tokenizer.py
@@ -14,6 +14,8 @@ class MitieTokenizer(Tokenizer):
         "intent_tokenization_flag": False,
         # Symbol on which intent should be split
         "intent_split_symbol": "_",
+        # Regular expression to detect tokens
+        "token_pattern": None,
     }
 
     @classmethod
@@ -32,7 +34,7 @@ def tokenize(self, message: Message, attribute: Text) -> List[Token]:
             for token, offset in tokenized
         ]
 
-        return tokens
+        return self._apply_token_pattern(tokens)
 
     def _token_from_offset(
         self, text: bytes, offset: int, encoded_sentence: bytes
diff --git a/rasa/nlu/tokenizers/spacy_tokenizer.py b/rasa/nlu/tokenizers/spacy_tokenizer.py
index b3ab4cdc6b64..3860cc274443 100644
--- a/rasa/nlu/tokenizers/spacy_tokenizer.py
+++ b/rasa/nlu/tokenizers/spacy_tokenizer.py
@@ -25,6 +25,8 @@ def required_components(cls) -> List[Type[Component]]:
         "intent_tokenization_flag": False,
         # Symbol on which intent should be split
         "intent_split_symbol": "_",
+        # Regular expression to detect tokens
+        "token_pattern": None,
     }
 
     def get_doc(self, message: Message, attribute: Text) -> "Doc":
@@ -33,7 +35,7 @@ def get_doc(self, message: Message, attribute: Text) -> "Doc":
     def tokenize(self, message: Message, attribute: Text) -> List[Token]:
         doc = self.get_doc(message, attribute)
 
-        return [
+        tokens = [
             Token(
                 t.text, t.idx, lemma=t.lemma_, data={POS_TAG_KEY: self._tag_of_token(t)}
             )
@@ -41,6 +43,8 @@ def tokenize(self, message: Message, attribute: Text) -> List[Token]:
             if t.text and t.text.strip()
         ]
 
+        return self._apply_token_pattern(tokens)
+
     @staticmethod
     def _tag_of_token(token: Any) -> Text:
         import spacy
diff --git a/rasa/nlu/tokenizers/tokenizer.py b/rasa/nlu/tokenizers/tokenizer.py
index a1e8ccc13e17..4d3bad85e73c 100644
--- a/rasa/nlu/tokenizers/tokenizer.py
+++ b/rasa/nlu/tokenizers/tokenizer.py
@@ -1,4 +1,5 @@
 import logging
+import re
 
 from typing import Text, List, Optional, Dict, Any
 
@@ -65,6 +66,11 @@ def __init__(self, component_config: Dict[Text, Any] = None) -> None:
         )
         # split symbol for intents
         self.intent_split_symbol = self.component_config.get("intent_split_symbol", "_")
+        # token pattern to further split tokens
+        token_pattern = self.component_config.get("token_pattern", None)
+        self.token_pattern_regex = None
+        if token_pattern:
+            self.token_pattern_regex = re.compile(token_pattern)
 
     def tokenize(self, message: Message, attribute: Text) -> List[Token]:
         """Tokenizes the text of the provided attribute of the incoming message."""
@@ -105,6 +111,42 @@ def _split_intent(self, message: Message):
 
         return self._convert_words_to_tokens(words, text)
 
+    def _apply_token_pattern(self, tokens: List[Token]) -> List[Token]:
+        """Apply the token pattern to the given tokens.
+
+        Args:
+            tokens: list of tokens to split
+
+        Returns:
+            List of tokens.
+        """
+        if not self.token_pattern_regex:
+            return tokens
+
+        final_tokens = []
+        for token in tokens:
+            new_tokens = self.token_pattern_regex.findall(token.text)
+            new_tokens = [t for t in new_tokens if t]
+
+            if not new_tokens:
+                final_tokens.append(token)
+
+            running_offset = 0
+            for new_token in new_tokens:
+                word_offset = token.text.index(new_token, running_offset)
+                word_len = len(new_token)
+                running_offset = word_offset + word_len
+                final_tokens.append(
+                    Token(
+                        new_token,
+                        token.start + word_offset,
+                        data=token.data,
+                        lemma=token.lemma,
+                    )
+                )
+
+        return final_tokens
+
     @staticmethod
     def _convert_words_to_tokens(words: List[Text], text: Text) -> List[Token]:
         running_offset = 0
diff --git a/rasa/nlu/tokenizers/whitespace_tokenizer.py b/rasa/nlu/tokenizers/whitespace_tokenizer.py
index 47f614f3d534..9d51f0d33701 100644
--- a/rasa/nlu/tokenizers/whitespace_tokenizer.py
+++ b/rasa/nlu/tokenizers/whitespace_tokenizer.py
@@ -14,6 +14,8 @@ class WhitespaceTokenizer(Tokenizer):
         "intent_tokenization_flag": False,
         # Symbol on which intent should be split
         "intent_split_symbol": "_",
+        # Regular expression to detect tokens
+        "token_pattern": None,
         # Text will be tokenized with case sensitive as default
         "case_sensitive": True,
     }
@@ -77,4 +79,6 @@ def tokenize(self, message: Message, attribute: Text) -> List[Token]:
         if not words:
             words = [text]
 
-        return self._convert_words_to_tokens(words, text)
+        tokens = self._convert_words_to_tokens(words, text)
+
+        return self._apply_token_pattern(tokens)
diff --git a/tests/nlu/featurizers/test_count_vectors_featurizer.py b/tests/nlu/featurizers/test_count_vectors_featurizer.py
index 14bf35dc8ef9..42effc649aeb 100644
--- a/tests/nlu/featurizers/test_count_vectors_featurizer.py
+++ b/tests/nlu/featurizers/test_count_vectors_featurizer.py
@@ -23,7 +23,7 @@
     ],
 )
 def test_count_vector_featurizer(sentence, expected, expected_cls):
-    ftr = CountVectorsFeaturizer({"token_pattern": r"(?u)\b\w+\b"})
+    ftr = CountVectorsFeaturizer()
 
     train_message = Message(sentence)
     test_message = Message(sentence)
@@ -54,7 +54,7 @@ def test_count_vector_featurizer(sentence, expected, expected_cls):
 def test_count_vector_featurizer_response_attribute_featurization(
     sentence, intent, response, intent_features, response_features
 ):
-    ftr = CountVectorsFeaturizer({"token_pattern": r"(?u)\b\w+\b"})
+    ftr = CountVectorsFeaturizer()
     tk = WhitespaceTokenizer()
 
     train_message = Message(sentence)
@@ -104,7 +104,7 @@ def test_count_vector_featurizer_response_attribute_featurization(
 def test_count_vector_featurizer_attribute_featurization(
     sentence, intent, response, intent_features, response_features
 ):
-    ftr = CountVectorsFeaturizer({"token_pattern": r"(?u)\b\w+\b"})
+    ftr = CountVectorsFeaturizer()
     tk = WhitespaceTokenizer()
 
     train_message = Message(sentence)
@@ -153,9 +153,7 @@ def test_count_vector_featurizer_attribute_featurization(
 def test_count_vector_featurizer_shared_vocab(
     sentence, intent, response, text_features, intent_features, response_features
 ):
-    ftr = CountVectorsFeaturizer(
-        {"token_pattern": r"(?u)\b\w+\b", "use_shared_vocab": True}
-    )
+    ftr = CountVectorsFeaturizer({"use_shared_vocab": True})
     tk = WhitespaceTokenizer()
 
     train_message = Message(sentence)
@@ -188,9 +186,7 @@ def test_count_vector_featurizer_shared_vocab(
     ],
 )
 def test_count_vector_featurizer_oov_token(sentence, expected):
-    ftr = CountVectorsFeaturizer(
-        {"token_pattern": r"(?u)\b\w+\b", "OOV_token": "__oov__"}
-    )
+    ftr = CountVectorsFeaturizer({"OOV_token": "__oov__"})
     train_message = Message(sentence)
     WhitespaceTokenizer().process(train_message)
 
@@ -217,11 +213,7 @@ def test_count_vector_featurizer_oov_token(sentence, expected):
 def test_count_vector_featurizer_oov_words(sentence, expected):
 
     ftr = CountVectorsFeaturizer(
-        {
-            "token_pattern": r"(?u)\b\w+\b",
-            "OOV_token": "__oov__",
-            "OOV_words": ["oov_word0", "OOV_word1"],
-        }
+        {"OOV_token": "__oov__", "OOV_words": ["oov_word0", "OOV_word1"]}
     )
     train_message = Message(sentence)
     WhitespaceTokenizer().process(train_message)
@@ -251,7 +243,7 @@ def test_count_vector_featurizer_oov_words(sentence, expected):
 )
 def test_count_vector_featurizer_using_tokens(tokens, expected):
 
-    ftr = CountVectorsFeaturizer({"token_pattern": r"(?u)\b\w+\b"})
+    ftr = CountVectorsFeaturizer()
 
     # using empty string instead of real text string to make sure
     # count vector only can come from `tokens` feature.
@@ -307,7 +299,6 @@ def test_count_vector_featurizer_persist_load(tmp_path):
     # set non default values to config
     config = {
         "analyzer": "char",
-        "token_pattern": r"(?u)\b\w+\b",
         "strip_accents": "ascii",
         "stop_words": "stop",
         "min_df": 2,
diff --git a/tests/nlu/tokenizers/test_tokenizer.py b/tests/nlu/tokenizers/test_tokenizer.py
index b6d6de5a14a0..f250472f182f 100644
--- a/tests/nlu/tokenizers/test_tokenizer.py
+++ b/tests/nlu/tokenizers/test_tokenizer.py
@@ -1,13 +1,14 @@
+from typing import List, Text
+
 import pytest
 
+from rasa.nlu.tokenizers.tokenizer import Token
 from rasa.nlu.constants import TEXT, INTENT, RESPONSE, TOKENS_NAMES
 from rasa.nlu.training_data import Message, TrainingData
 from rasa.nlu.tokenizers.whitespace_tokenizer import WhitespaceTokenizer
 
 
 def test_tokens_comparison():
-    from rasa.nlu.tokenizers.tokenizer import Token
-
     x = Token("hello", 0)
     y = Token("Hello", 0)
 
@@ -83,3 +84,53 @@ def test_split_intent(text, expected_tokens):
     message.set(INTENT, text)
 
     assert [t.text for t in tk._split_intent(message)] == expected_tokens
+
+
+@pytest.mark.parametrize(
+    "token_pattern, tokens, expected_tokens",
+    [
+        (
+            None,
+            [Token("hello", 0), Token("there", 6)],
+            [Token("hello", 0), Token("there", 6)],
+        ),
+        (
+            "",
+            [Token("hello", 0), Token("there", 6)],
+            [Token("hello", 0), Token("there", 6)],
+        ),
+        (
+            r"(?u)\b\w\w+\b",
+            [Token("role-based", 0), Token("access-control", 11)],
+            [
+                Token("role", 0),
+                Token("based", 5),
+                Token("access", 11),
+                Token("control", 18),
+            ],
+        ),
+        (
+            r".*",
+            [Token("role-based", 0), Token("access-control", 11)],
+            [Token("role-based", 0), Token("access-control", 11)],
+        ),
+        (
+            r"(test)",
+            [Token("role-based", 0), Token("access-control", 11)],
+            [Token("role-based", 0), Token("access-control", 11)],
+        ),
+    ],
+)
+def test_apply_token_pattern(
+    token_pattern: Text, tokens: List[Token], expected_tokens: List[Token]
+):
+    component_config = {"token_pattern": token_pattern}
+
+    tokenizer = WhitespaceTokenizer(component_config)
+    actual_tokens = tokenizer._apply_token_pattern(tokens)
+
+    assert len(actual_tokens) == len(expected_tokens)
+    for actual_token, expected_token in zip(actual_tokens, expected_tokens):
+        assert actual_token.text == expected_token.text
+        assert actual_token.start == expected_token.start
+        assert actual_token.end == expected_token.end