diff --git a/.github/workflows/ci-build-crates.yml b/.github/workflows/ci-build-crates.yml
index a5aa0c6d65c..5dce9b075fb 100644
--- a/.github/workflows/ci-build-crates.yml
+++ b/.github/workflows/ci-build-crates.yml
@@ -104,8 +104,9 @@ jobs:
     # Some of these builds take more than 14GB disk space
     runs-on: ubuntu-latest-m
     strategy:
-      # avoid rate-limit errors by only launching a few of these jobs at a time
-      max-parallel: 2
+      # avoid rate-limit errors by only launching a few of these jobs at a time,
+      # but still finish in a similar time to the longest tests
+      max-parallel: 3
       fail-fast: true
       matrix: ${{ fromJson(needs.matrix.outputs.matrix) }}