diff --git a/.github/workflows/ci.yml b/.github/workflows/ci.yml
index aae5ed74723..a49d3d25afc 100644
--- a/.github/workflows/ci.yml
+++ b/.github/workflows/ci.yml
@@ -20,7 +20,6 @@ concurrency:
 env:
   CI_FAILFAST_TEST_LEAVE_DANGLING: 1  # GHA does not care about dangling processes and setting this variable avoids killing the CI script itself on error
   CIRRUS_CACHE_HOST: http://127.0.0.1:12321/ # When using Cirrus Runners this host can be used by the docker `gha` build cache type.
-  MAKEJOBS: '-j10'
   REPO_USE_CIRRUS_RUNNERS: 'bitcoin/bitcoin' # Use cirrus runners and cache for this repo, instead of falling back to the slow GHA runners
 
 jobs:
diff --git a/ci/test/00_setup_env.sh b/ci/test/00_setup_env.sh
index b9e6818afbc..1466e37b906 100755
--- a/ci/test/00_setup_env.sh
+++ b/ci/test/00_setup_env.sh
@@ -35,7 +35,7 @@ fi
 
 echo "Fallback to default values in env (if not yet set)"
 # The number of parallel jobs to pass down to make and test_runner.py
-export MAKEJOBS=${MAKEJOBS:--j4}
+export MAKEJOBS=${MAKEJOBS:--j$(if command -v nproc > /dev/null 2>&1; then nproc; else sysctl -n hw.logicalcpu; fi)}
 # Whether to prefer BusyBox over GNU utilities
 export USE_BUSY_BOX=${USE_BUSY_BOX:-false}