diff --git a/cmd/prometheus/main.go b/cmd/prometheus/main.go
index d7333b657..51320c661 100644
--- a/cmd/prometheus/main.go
+++ b/cmd/prometheus/main.go
@@ -384,6 +384,9 @@ func main() {
 	serverOnlyFlag(a, "storage.tsdb.allow-overlapping-blocks", "[DEPRECATED] This flag has no effect. Overlapping blocks are enabled by default now.").
 		Default("true").Hidden().BoolVar(&b)
 
+	serverOnlyFlag(a, "storage.tsdb.allow-overlapping-compaction", "Allow compaction of overlapping blocks. If set to false, TSDB stops vertical compaction and leaves overlapping blocks there. The use case is to let another component handle the compaction of overlapping blocks.").
+		Default("true").Hidden().BoolVar(&cfg.tsdb.EnableOverlappingCompaction)
+
 	serverOnlyFlag(a, "storage.tsdb.wal-compression", "Compress the tsdb WAL.").
 		Hidden().Default("true").BoolVar(&cfg.tsdb.WALCompression)
 
@@ -1719,6 +1722,7 @@ type tsdbOptions struct {
 	EnableMemorySnapshotOnShutdown bool
 	EnableNativeHistograms         bool
 	EnableDelayedCompaction        bool
+	EnableOverlappingCompaction    bool
 }
 
 func (opts tsdbOptions) ToTSDBOptions() tsdb.Options {
@@ -1739,8 +1743,8 @@ func (opts tsdbOptions) ToTSDBOptions() tsdb.Options {
 		EnableMemorySnapshotOnShutdown: opts.EnableMemorySnapshotOnShutdown,
 		EnableNativeHistograms:         opts.EnableNativeHistograms,
 		OutOfOrderTimeWindow:           opts.OutOfOrderTimeWindow,
-		EnableOverlappingCompaction:    true,
 		EnableDelayedCompaction:        opts.EnableDelayedCompaction,
+		EnableOverlappingCompaction:    opts.EnableOverlappingCompaction,
 	}
 }
 
diff --git a/tsdb/db.go b/tsdb/db.go
index 3c73c892a..1c430c211 100644
--- a/tsdb/db.go
+++ b/tsdb/db.go
@@ -187,7 +187,6 @@ type Options struct {
 	// The reason why this flag exists is because there are various users of the TSDB
 	// that do not want vertical compaction happening on ingest time. Instead,
 	// they'd rather keep overlapping blocks and let another component do the overlapping compaction later.
-	// For Prometheus, this will always be true.
 	EnableOverlappingCompaction bool
 
 	// EnableSharding enables query sharding support in TSDB.