diff --git a/pandoc.cabal b/pandoc.cabal
index 7e617c8ee..d0347e22f 100644
--- a/pandoc.cabal
+++ b/pandoc.cabal
@@ -833,4 +833,4 @@ benchmark benchmark-pandoc
                    time,
                    deepseq
   -- we increase heap size to avoid benchmarking garbage collection:
-  ghc-options:     -rtsopts -with-rtsopts=-A256m -threaded
+  ghc-options:     -rtsopts -with-rtsopts=-A8m -threaded