diff --git a/master_changes.md b/master_changes.md
index bae8e0d2f2b..ca710438b6a 100644
--- a/master_changes.md
+++ b/master_changes.md
@@ -121,6 +121,7 @@ users)
 ## Internal
   * Stop using polymorphic comparison when comparing `OpamTypes.switch_selections` [#6102 @kit-ty-kate]
   * Remove the meta opam packages opam and opam-admin [#6115 @kit-ty-kate]
+  * Reduce allocations in OpamVersionCompare [#6144 @talex5]
 
 ## Internal: Windows
 
diff --git a/src/core/opamVersionCompare.ml b/src/core/opamVersionCompare.ml
index 9fefb43c24c..9aa47372935 100644
--- a/src/core/opamVersionCompare.ml
+++ b/src/core/opamVersionCompare.ml
@@ -20,11 +20,9 @@ let is_digit = function
 (* [skip_while_from i f w m] yields the index of the leftmost character
  * in the string [s], starting from [i], and ending at [m], that does
  * not satisfy the predicate [f], or [length w] if no such index exists.  *)
-let skip_while_from i f w m =
-  let rec loop i =
-    if i = m then i
-    else if f w.[i] then loop (i + 1) else i
-  in loop i
+let rec skip_while_from i f w m =
+  if i = m then i
+  else if f w.[i] then skip_while_from (i + 1) f w m else i
 ;;
 
 (* splits a version into (epoch,rest), without the separating ':'. The