diff --git a/pairtools/cli/dedup.py b/pairtools/cli/dedup.py
index 94a5c64c..5ec4f4c7 100644
--- a/pairtools/cli/dedup.py
+++ b/pairtools/cli/dedup.py
@@ -113,7 +113,7 @@
 @click.option(
     "--chunksize",
     type=int,
-    default=100_000,
+    default=10_000,
     show_default=True,
     help="Number of pairs in each chunk. Reduce for lower memory footprint."
     " Below 10,000 performance starts suffering significantly and the algorithm might"