diff --git a/Lib/test/test_sys.py b/Lib/test/test_sys.py
index 19597eb75f9168..72d51361e0b4d1 100644
--- a/Lib/test/test_sys.py
+++ b/Lib/test/test_sys.py
@@ -285,6 +285,27 @@ def check_exit_message(code, expected, **env_vars):
             r'import sys; sys.exit("h\xe9")',
             b"h\xe9", PYTHONIOENCODING='latin-1')
 
+    @support.requires_subprocess()
+    def test_exit_codes_under_repl(self):
+        # GH-129900: SystemExit, or things that raised it, didn't
+        # get their return code propagated by the REPL
+        import tempfile
+
+        exit_ways = [
+            "exit",
+            "__import__('sys').exit",
+            "raise SystemExit"
+        ]
+
+        for exitfunc in exit_ways:
+            for return_code in (0, 123):
+                with self.subTest(exitfunc=exitfunc, return_code=return_code):
+                    with tempfile.TemporaryFile("w+") as stdin:
+                        stdin.write(f"{exitfunc}({return_code})\n")
+                        stdin.seek(0)
+                        proc = subprocess.run([sys.executable], stdin=stdin)
+                        self.assertEqual(proc.returncode, return_code)
+
     def test_getdefaultencoding(self):
         self.assertRaises(TypeError, sys.getdefaultencoding, 42)
         # can't check more than the type, as the user might have changed it
diff --git a/Misc/NEWS.d/next/Core_and_Builtins/2025-02-09-09-54-37.gh-issue-129900.GAGGPn.rst b/Misc/NEWS.d/next/Core_and_Builtins/2025-02-09-09-54-37.gh-issue-129900.GAGGPn.rst
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000000..df15114cff7eb6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Misc/NEWS.d/next/Core_and_Builtins/2025-02-09-09-54-37.gh-issue-129900.GAGGPn.rst
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Fix return codes inside :exc:`SystemExit` not getting returned by the REPL.
diff --git a/Modules/main.c b/Modules/main.c
index 3bf2241f2837a3..581c87270ff93f 100644
--- a/Modules/main.c
+++ b/Modules/main.c
@@ -572,8 +572,7 @@ pymain_run_stdin(PyConfig *config)
         int run = PyRun_AnyFileExFlags(stdin, "<stdin>", 0, &cf);
         return (run != 0);
     }
-    int run = pymain_run_module(L"_pyrepl", 0);
-    return (run != 0);
+    return pymain_run_module(L"_pyrepl", 0);
 }