diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 295f7d4650..8aa5bb8d78 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -35,6 +35,8 @@
       `logsEnabled` argument. The deprecated constructor without `minimumLevel` is removed.
     - Manually constructed `SentryTimberIntegration` and `SentryTimberTree` instances require a
       `logsEnabled` argument. Pass `false` to keep Sentry Logs disabled.
+- Disable tracing for HTTP `OPTIONS` requests by default. Set `traceOptionsRequests` to `true` to
+  preserve the previous behavior ([#6254](https://github.com/getsentry/sentry-java/pull/6254))
 - Remove the Apache HttpClient transport and stop publishing `sentry-apache-http-client-5` ([#6214](https://github.com/getsentry/sentry-java/pull/6214))
 
 ### Features
diff --git a/sentry/src/main/java/io/sentry/SentryOptions.java b/sentry/src/main/java/io/sentry/SentryOptions.java
index 36b34630d4..2c98a77c3e 100644
--- a/sentry/src/main/java/io/sentry/SentryOptions.java
+++ b/sentry/src/main/java/io/sentry/SentryOptions.java
@@ -517,9 +517,8 @@ public class SentryOptions implements RateLimiterConfig {
 
   private @NotNull IThreadChecker threadChecker = NoOpThreadChecker.getInstance();
 
-  // TODO [MAJOR] this should default to false on the next major
   /** Whether OPTIONS requests should be traced. */
-  private boolean traceOptionsRequests = true;
+  private boolean traceOptionsRequests = false;
 
   /** Whether database transaction spans (BEGIN, COMMIT, ROLLBACK) should be traced. */
   private boolean enableDatabaseTransactionTracing = false;
diff --git a/sentry/src/test/java/io/sentry/SentryOptionsTest.kt b/sentry/src/test/java/io/sentry/SentryOptionsTest.kt
index 3d38f48d08..cf18c4870d 100644
--- a/sentry/src/test/java/io/sentry/SentryOptionsTest.kt
+++ b/sentry/src/test/java/io/sentry/SentryOptionsTest.kt
@@ -304,6 +304,11 @@ class SentryOptionsTest {
     assertFalse(options.isTracingEnabled)
   }
 
+  @Test
+  fun `traceOptionsRequests defaults to false`() {
+    assertThat(SentryOptions().isTraceOptionsRequests).isFalse()
+  }
+
   @Test
   fun `when there's no cacheDirPath, outboxPath returns null`() {
     val options = SentryOptions()