diff --git a/Cargo.toml b/Cargo.toml
index 06fed2c68..9caff2512 100644
--- a/Cargo.toml
+++ b/Cargo.toml
@@ -49,7 +49,7 @@ bigdecimal = { version = "0.4.1", features = ["serde"], optional = true }
 log = "0.4"
 recursive = { version = "0.1.1", optional = true}
 
-serde = { version = "1.0", features = ["derive"], optional = true }
+serde = { version = "1.0", default-features = false, features = ["derive", "alloc"], optional = true }
 # serde_json is only used in examples/cli, but we have to put it outside
 # of dev-dependencies because of
 # https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/1596