diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 5181dc5ae7c..d6eb53e7728 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -5,6 +5,7 @@
 ### Grafana Mimir
 
 * [CHANGE] Store-gateway: skip verifying index header integrity upon loading. To enable verification set `blocks_storage.bucket_store.index_header.verify_on_load: true`.
+* [CHANGE] Querier: change the default value of the experimental `-querier.streaming-chunks-per-ingester-buffer-size` flag to 128. #5203
 * [ENHANCEMENT] Cardinality API: When zone aware replication is enabled, the label values cardinality API can now tolerate single zone failure #5178
 * [ENHANCEMENT] Distributor: optimize sending requests to ingesters when incoming requests don't need to be modified. For now this feature can be disabled by setting `-timeseries-unmarshal-caching-optimization-enabled=false`. #5137
 
diff --git a/cmd/mimir/config-descriptor.json b/cmd/mimir/config-descriptor.json
index 1ca4b8d8cb4..313e022edc2 100644
--- a/cmd/mimir/config-descriptor.json
+++ b/cmd/mimir/config-descriptor.json
@@ -1657,7 +1657,7 @@
           "required": false,
           "desc": "Number of series to buffer per ingester when streaming chunks from ingesters.",
           "fieldValue": null,
-          "fieldDefaultValue": 512,
+          "fieldDefaultValue": 256,
           "fieldFlag": "querier.streaming-chunks-per-ingester-buffer-size",
           "fieldType": "int",
           "fieldCategory": "experimental"
diff --git a/cmd/mimir/help-all.txt.tmpl b/cmd/mimir/help-all.txt.tmpl
index d2c045dce2b..587754684ca 100644
--- a/cmd/mimir/help-all.txt.tmpl
+++ b/cmd/mimir/help-all.txt.tmpl
@@ -1582,7 +1582,7 @@ Usage of ./cmd/mimir/mimir:
   -querier.store-gateway-client.tls-server-name string
     	Override the expected name on the server certificate.
   -querier.streaming-chunks-per-ingester-buffer-size uint
-    	[experimental] Number of series to buffer per ingester when streaming chunks from ingesters. (default 512)
+    	[experimental] Number of series to buffer per ingester when streaming chunks from ingesters. (default 256)
   -querier.timeout duration
     	The timeout for a query. This config option should be set on query-frontend too when query sharding is enabled. This also applies to queries evaluated by the ruler (internally or remotely). (default 2m0s)
   -query-frontend.align-queries-with-step
diff --git a/docs/sources/mimir/references/configuration-parameters/index.md b/docs/sources/mimir/references/configuration-parameters/index.md
index f27a4ef8e0e..630529af33f 100644
--- a/docs/sources/mimir/references/configuration-parameters/index.md
+++ b/docs/sources/mimir/references/configuration-parameters/index.md
@@ -1069,7 +1069,7 @@ store_gateway_client:
 # (experimental) Number of series to buffer per ingester when streaming chunks
 # from ingesters.
 # CLI flag: -querier.streaming-chunks-per-ingester-buffer-size
-[streaming_chunks_per_ingester_series_buffer_size: <int> | default = 512]
+[streaming_chunks_per_ingester_series_buffer_size: <int> | default = 256]
 
 # The number of workers running in each querier process. This setting limits the
 # maximum number of concurrent queries in each querier.
diff --git a/pkg/querier/querier.go b/pkg/querier/querier.go
index 386f2721211..b76714b2498 100644
--- a/pkg/querier/querier.go
+++ b/pkg/querier/querier.go
@@ -83,20 +83,9 @@ func (cfg *Config) RegisterFlags(f *flag.FlagSet) {
 	f.BoolVar(&cfg.ShuffleShardingIngestersEnabled, "querier.shuffle-sharding-ingesters-enabled", true, fmt.Sprintf("Fetch in-memory series from the minimum set of required ingesters, selecting only ingesters which may have received series since -%s. If this setting is false or -%s is '0', queriers always query all ingesters (ingesters shuffle sharding on read path is disabled).", validation.QueryIngestersWithinFlag, validation.QueryIngestersWithinFlag))
 	f.BoolVar(&cfg.PreferStreamingChunks, "querier.prefer-streaming-chunks", false, "Request ingesters stream chunks. Ingesters will only respond with a stream of chunks if the target ingester supports this, and this preference will be ignored by ingesters that do not support this.")
 
-	// Why 512 series / ingester?
-	//
-	// Assuming the worst case scenario of loading a full 13 hours of chunks for a series from an ingester, a 15s scrape
-	// interval, 120 samples per chunk with average chunk size of 300 B, 1024 series would consume ~8 MB (26 chunks needed
-	// per series to cover 13 hours, so 7.8 KB needed per series).
-	//
-	// Note that this will not hold true for native histograms, which can be substantially larger.
-	//
-	// We have up to two active batches per ingester in SeriesChunksStreamReader (one in the channel and one already
-	// received from the channel), so we use 1024/2=512 series per buffer per ingester.
-	//
-	// 512 series / ingester was also a good balance between the CPU overhead of managing a batch of series with the memory
-	// cost of keeping it in memory in our testing.
-	f.Uint64Var(&cfg.StreamingChunksPerIngesterSeriesBufferSize, "querier.streaming-chunks-per-ingester-buffer-size", 512, "Number of series to buffer per ingester when streaming chunks from ingesters.")
+	// Why 256 series / ingester?
+	// Based on our testing, 256 series / ingester was a good balance between memory consumption and the CPU overhead of managing a batch of series.
+	f.Uint64Var(&cfg.StreamingChunksPerIngesterSeriesBufferSize, "querier.streaming-chunks-per-ingester-buffer-size", 256, "Number of series to buffer per ingester when streaming chunks from ingesters.")
 
 	// The querier.query-ingesters-within flag has been moved to the limits.go file
 	// We still need to set a default value for cfg.QueryIngestersWithin since we need to keep supporting the querier yaml field until Mimir 2.11.0