diff --git a/.changelog/4891.removed b/.changelog/4891.removed
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..0aaea7a52e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.changelog/4891.removed
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+`opentelemetry-instrumentation-sqlalchemy`: remove the runtime `packaging` dependency in favor of the internal PEP 440 implementation in `opentelemetry-instrumentation`
diff --git a/instrumentation/opentelemetry-instrumentation-sqlalchemy/pyproject.toml b/instrumentation/opentelemetry-instrumentation-sqlalchemy/pyproject.toml
index fe6b11d16f..4b3040b264 100644
--- a/instrumentation/opentelemetry-instrumentation-sqlalchemy/pyproject.toml
+++ b/instrumentation/opentelemetry-instrumentation-sqlalchemy/pyproject.toml
@@ -28,7 +28,6 @@ dependencies = [
   "opentelemetry-api ~= 1.12",
   "opentelemetry-instrumentation == 0.66b0.dev",
   "opentelemetry-semantic-conventions == 0.66b0.dev",
-  "packaging >= 21.0",
   "wrapt >= 1.11.2",
 ]
 
diff --git a/instrumentation/opentelemetry-instrumentation-sqlalchemy/src/opentelemetry/instrumentation/sqlalchemy/__init__.py b/instrumentation/opentelemetry-instrumentation-sqlalchemy/src/opentelemetry/instrumentation/sqlalchemy/__init__.py
index baa0ceadb3..e8a4c6e085 100644
--- a/instrumentation/opentelemetry-instrumentation-sqlalchemy/src/opentelemetry/instrumentation/sqlalchemy/__init__.py
+++ b/instrumentation/opentelemetry-instrumentation-sqlalchemy/src/opentelemetry/instrumentation/sqlalchemy/__init__.py
@@ -126,10 +126,12 @@
 from typing import Collection
 
 import sqlalchemy
-from packaging.version import parse as parse_version
 from sqlalchemy.engine.base import Engine
 from wrapt import wrap_function_wrapper as _w
 
+from opentelemetry.instrumentation._packaging.version import (
+    parse as parse_version,
+)
 from opentelemetry.instrumentation._semconv import (
     _get_schema_url_for_signal_types,
     _OpenTelemetrySemanticConventionStability,