Abstract. Let f (x) = P 0 (x)α x 0 + · · · + P k (x)α x k be an exponential polynomial over a field of zero characteristic. Assume that for each pair i, j with i = j , α i /α j is not a root of unity. Define = k j =0 (deg P j +1). We introduce a partition of α 0 , . . . , α k into subsets α i0 , . . . , α ik i (1 ≤ i ≤ m), which induces a decomposition of f into f = f 1 +· · ·+f m , so that, for 1 ≤ i ≤ m, α i0 : · · · : α ik i ∈ P k i (Q), while for 1 ≤ i = u ≤ m, the number α i0 /α u0 either is transcendental or else is algebraic with not too small a height. Then we show that for all but at most exp (5 ) 5 solutions x ∈ Z of f (x) = 0, we have f 1 (x) = · · · = f m (x) = 0.