diff --git a/opentelemetry-otlp/CHANGELOG.md b/opentelemetry-otlp/CHANGELOG.md
index ce4b760618..b7156e3ab6 100644
--- a/opentelemetry-otlp/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/opentelemetry-otlp/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -6,7 +6,10 @@
 - Feature flag "populate-logs-event-name" is removed as no longer relevant.
   LogRecord's `event_name()` is now automatically populated on the newly added
   "event_name" field in LogRecord proto definition.
-
+- Remove "grpc-tonic" feature from default, and instead add "http-proto" and
+  "reqwest-blocking-client" features as default, to align with the
+  specification.
+  [2516](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-rust/pull/2516)
 
 ## 0.27.0
 
diff --git a/opentelemetry-otlp/Cargo.toml b/opentelemetry-otlp/Cargo.toml
index cebe075082..0c7ee8fe94 100644
--- a/opentelemetry-otlp/Cargo.toml
+++ b/opentelemetry-otlp/Cargo.toml
@@ -62,7 +62,7 @@ internal-logs = ["tracing", "opentelemetry/internal-logs"]
 # add ons
 serialize = ["serde", "serde_json"]
 
-default = ["grpc-tonic", "trace", "metrics", "logs", "internal-logs"]
+default = ["http-proto", "reqwest-blocking-client", "trace", "metrics", "logs", "internal-logs"]
 
 # grpc using tonic
 grpc-tonic = ["tonic", "prost", "http", "tokio", "opentelemetry-proto/gen-tonic"]
diff --git a/opentelemetry-otlp/examples/basic-otlp-http/Cargo.toml b/opentelemetry-otlp/examples/basic-otlp-http/Cargo.toml
index 4974c8a223..242ea0c1f8 100644
--- a/opentelemetry-otlp/examples/basic-otlp-http/Cargo.toml
+++ b/opentelemetry-otlp/examples/basic-otlp-http/Cargo.toml
@@ -6,7 +6,6 @@ license = "Apache-2.0"
 publish = false
 
 [features]
-default = ["reqwest-blocking"]
 reqwest-blocking = ["opentelemetry-otlp/reqwest-blocking-client"]
 hyper = ["opentelemetry-otlp/hyper-client"]
 
@@ -14,7 +13,7 @@ hyper = ["opentelemetry-otlp/hyper-client"]
 once_cell = { workspace = true }
 opentelemetry = { path = "../../../opentelemetry" }
 opentelemetry_sdk = { path = "../../../opentelemetry-sdk", features = ["rt-tokio", "experimental_metrics_periodicreader_with_async_runtime"]}
-opentelemetry-otlp = { path = "../..", features = ["http-proto", "http-json", "logs", "internal-logs"] , default-features = false}
+opentelemetry-otlp = { path = "../..", features = ["http-proto", "http-json", "logs", "internal-logs"]}
 opentelemetry-appender-tracing = { path = "../../../opentelemetry-appender-tracing", default-features = false}
 
 tokio = { workspace = true, features = ["full"] }
diff --git a/opentelemetry-otlp/examples/basic-otlp/Cargo.toml b/opentelemetry-otlp/examples/basic-otlp/Cargo.toml
index ad050bc338..735a9470d7 100644
--- a/opentelemetry-otlp/examples/basic-otlp/Cargo.toml
+++ b/opentelemetry-otlp/examples/basic-otlp/Cargo.toml
@@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ publish = false
 once_cell = { workspace = true }
 opentelemetry = { path = "../../../opentelemetry" }
 opentelemetry_sdk = { path = "../../../opentelemetry-sdk", features = ["rt-tokio"] }
-opentelemetry-otlp = { path = "../../../opentelemetry-otlp" }
+opentelemetry-otlp = { path = "../../../opentelemetry-otlp", features = ["grpc-tonic"] }
 tokio = { version = "1.0", features = ["full"] }
 opentelemetry-appender-tracing = { path = "../../../opentelemetry-appender-tracing", default-features = false}
 tracing = { workspace = true, features = ["std"]}