diff --git a/test/fuzz/test_runner.py b/test/fuzz/test_runner.py
index 581fb36c53..c1d0c10b8b 100755
--- a/test/fuzz/test_runner.py
+++ b/test/fuzz/test_runner.py
@@ -224,7 +224,11 @@ def merge_inputs(*, fuzz_pool, corpus, test_list, src_dir, build_dir, merge_dir)
     for t in test_list:
         args = [
             os.path.join(build_dir, 'src', 'test', 'fuzz', 'fuzz'),
-            '-merge=1',
+            '-set_cover_merge=1',
+            # set_cover_merge is used instead of -merge=1 to reduce the overall
+            # size of the qa-assets git repository a bit, but more importantly,
+            # to cut the runtime to iterate over all fuzz inputs [0].
+            # [0] https://github.com/bitcoin-core/qa-assets/issues/130#issuecomment-1761760866
             '-shuffle=0',
             '-prefer_small=1',
             '-use_value_profile=1',  # Also done by oss-fuzz https://github.com/google/oss-fuzz/issues/1406#issuecomment-387790487