diff --git a/Cargo.toml b/Cargo.toml
index bb84e41b8..f39aa328e 100644
--- a/Cargo.toml
+++ b/Cargo.toml
@@ -17,7 +17,7 @@ byteorder = "1.0"
 lazy_static = "1"
 regex = "1.0"
 fst = {version="0.3", default-features=false}
-fst-regex = { version="0.2" }
+fst-regex = { version="0.2", optional=true}
 lz4 = {version="1.20", optional=true}
 snap = {version="0.2"}
 atomicwrites = {version="0.2.2", optional=true}
@@ -68,8 +68,9 @@ overflow-checks = true
 
 [features]
 # by default no-fail is disabled. We manually enable it when running test.
-default = ["mmap", "no_fail"]
+default = ["mmap", "no_fail", "regex_query"]
 mmap = ["fst/mmap", "atomicwrites"]
+regex_query = ["fst-regex"]
 lz4-compression = ["lz4"]
 no_fail = ["fail/no_fail"]
 
diff --git a/src/lib.rs b/src/lib.rs
index 62802dc91..af9f095d8 100755
--- a/src/lib.rs
+++ b/src/lib.rs
@@ -136,7 +136,7 @@ extern crate crossbeam;
 extern crate crossbeam_channel;
 extern crate fnv;
 extern crate fst;
-extern crate fst_regex;
+
 extern crate futures;
 extern crate futures_cpupool;
 extern crate htmlescape;
diff --git a/src/query/mod.rs b/src/query/mod.rs
index b7136c232..2a15ecd06 100644
--- a/src/query/mod.rs
+++ b/src/query/mod.rs
@@ -16,7 +16,10 @@ mod phrase_query;
 mod query;
 mod query_parser;
 mod range_query;
+
+#[cfg(feature="regex_query")]
 mod regex_query;
+
 mod reqopt_scorer;
 mod scorer;
 mod term_query;
@@ -47,7 +50,10 @@ pub use self::query::Query;
 pub use self::query_parser::QueryParser;
 pub use self::query_parser::QueryParserError;
 pub use self::range_query::RangeQuery;
+
+#[cfg(feature="regex_query")]
 pub use self::regex_query::RegexQuery;
+
 pub use self::reqopt_scorer::RequiredOptionalScorer;
 pub use self::scorer::ConstScorer;
 pub use self::scorer::Scorer;
diff --git a/src/query/regex_query.rs b/src/query/regex_query.rs
index dcdd9bdff..1c6f384a1 100644
--- a/src/query/regex_query.rs
+++ b/src/query/regex_query.rs
@@ -1,5 +1,7 @@
+extern crate fst_regex;
+
 use error::TantivyError;
-use fst_regex::Regex;
+use self::fst_regex::Regex;
 use query::{AutomatonWeight, Query, Weight};
 use schema::Field;
 use std::clone::Clone;