diff --git a/Cargo.toml b/Cargo.toml
index cab07efcd..d6f83f800 100644
--- a/Cargo.toml
+++ b/Cargo.toml
@@ -112,13 +112,16 @@ debug-assertions = true
 overflow-checks = true
 
 [features]
-default = ["mmap", "stopwords", "lz4-compression"]
+default = ["mmap", "stopwords", "lz4-compression", "columnar-zstd-compression"]
 mmap = ["fs4", "tempfile", "memmap2"]
 stopwords = []
 
 lz4-compression = ["lz4_flex"]
 zstd-compression = ["zstd"]
 
+# enable zstd-compression in columnar (and sstable)
+columnar-zstd-compression = ["columnar/zstd-compression"]
+
 failpoints = ["fail", "fail/failpoints"]
 unstable = []                            # useful for benches.
 
diff --git a/columnar/Cargo.toml b/columnar/Cargo.toml
index b17606c08..7c741b0b5 100644
--- a/columnar/Cargo.toml
+++ b/columnar/Cargo.toml
@@ -33,6 +33,6 @@ harness = false
 name = "bench_access"
 harness = false
 
-
 [features]
 unstable = []
+zstd-compression = ["sstable/zstd-compression"]
diff --git a/sstable/Cargo.toml b/sstable/Cargo.toml
index 2b2928bb2..52a183d6c 100644
--- a/sstable/Cargo.toml
+++ b/sstable/Cargo.toml
@@ -16,7 +16,10 @@ itertools = "0.14.0"
 tantivy-bitpacker = { version= "0.6", path="../bitpacker" }
 tantivy-fst = "0.5"
 # experimental gives us access to Decompressor::upper_bound
-zstd = { version = "0.13", features = ["experimental"] }
+zstd = { version = "0.13", optional = true, features = ["experimental"] }
+
+[features]
+zstd-compression = ["zstd"]
 
 [dev-dependencies]
 proptest = "1"
diff --git a/sstable/src/block_reader.rs b/sstable/src/block_reader.rs
index 8a86e83f7..0de2b44cd 100644
--- a/sstable/src/block_reader.rs
+++ b/sstable/src/block_reader.rs
@@ -2,6 +2,7 @@ use std::io::{self, Read};
 use std::ops::Range;
 
 use common::OwnedBytes;
+#[cfg(feature = "zstd-compression")]
 use zstd::bulk::Decompressor;
 
 pub struct BlockReader {
@@ -82,13 +83,23 @@ impl BlockReader {
                 ));
             }
             if compress == 1 {
-                let required_capacity =
-                    Decompressor::upper_bound(&self.reader[..block_len]).unwrap_or(1024 * 1024);
-                self.buffer.reserve(required_capacity);
-                Decompressor::new()?
-                    .decompress_to_buffer(&self.reader[..block_len], &mut self.buffer)?;
+                #[cfg(feature = "zstd-compression")]
+                {
+                    let required_capacity =
+                        Decompressor::upper_bound(&self.reader[..block_len]).unwrap_or(1024 * 1024);
+                    self.buffer.reserve(required_capacity);
+                    Decompressor::new()?
+                        .decompress_to_buffer(&self.reader[..block_len], &mut self.buffer)?;
 
-                self.reader.advance(block_len);
+                    self.reader.advance(block_len);
+                }
+
+                if cfg!(not(feature = "zstd-compression")) {
+                    return Err(io::Error::new(
+                        io::ErrorKind::Unsupported,
+                        "zstd-compression feature is not enabled",
+                    ));
+                }
             } else {
                 self.buffer.resize(block_len, 0u8);
                 self.reader.read_exact(&mut self.buffer[..])?;
diff --git a/sstable/src/delta.rs b/sstable/src/delta.rs
index 9542c7905..4d4317ea8 100644
--- a/sstable/src/delta.rs
+++ b/sstable/src/delta.rs
@@ -2,6 +2,7 @@ use std::io::{self, BufWriter, Write};
 use std::ops::Range;
 
 use common::{CountingWriter, OwnedBytes};
+#[cfg(feature = "zstd-compression")]
 use zstd::bulk::Compressor;
 
 use super::value::ValueWriter;
@@ -53,25 +54,28 @@ where
 
         let block_len = buffer.len() + self.block.len();
 
-        if block_len > 2048 {
-            buffer.extend_from_slice(&self.block);
-            self.block.clear();
+        if cfg!(feature = "zstd-compression") && block_len > 2048 {
+            #[cfg(feature = "zstd-compression")]
+            {
+                buffer.extend_from_slice(&self.block);
+                self.block.clear();
 
-            let max_len = zstd::zstd_safe::compress_bound(buffer.len());
-            self.block.reserve(max_len);
-            Compressor::new(3)?.compress_to_buffer(buffer, &mut self.block)?;
+                let max_len = zstd::zstd_safe::compress_bound(buffer.len());
+                self.block.reserve(max_len);
+                Compressor::new(3)?.compress_to_buffer(buffer, &mut self.block)?;
 
-            // verify compression had a positive impact
-            if self.block.len() < buffer.len() {
-                self.write
-                    .write_all(&(self.block.len() as u32 + 1).to_le_bytes())?;
-                self.write.write_all(&[1])?;
-                self.write.write_all(&self.block[..])?;
-            } else {
-                self.write
-                    .write_all(&(block_len as u32 + 1).to_le_bytes())?;
-                self.write.write_all(&[0])?;
-                self.write.write_all(&buffer[..])?;
+                // verify compression had a positive impact
+                if self.block.len() < buffer.len() {
+                    self.write
+                        .write_all(&(self.block.len() as u32 + 1).to_le_bytes())?;
+                    self.write.write_all(&[1])?;
+                    self.write.write_all(&self.block[..])?;
+                } else {
+                    self.write
+                        .write_all(&(block_len as u32 + 1).to_le_bytes())?;
+                    self.write.write_all(&[0])?;
+                    self.write.write_all(&buffer[..])?;
+                }
             }
         } else {
             self.write