diff --git a/.cirrus.yml b/.cirrus.yml
index ca874e5ef9..8feccf61dc 100644
--- a/.cirrus.yml
+++ b/.cirrus.yml
@@ -639,7 +639,11 @@ local_integration_test_task: &local_integration_test_task
     only_if: *not_tag_branch_build_docs_machine
     depends_on: *build
     matrix: *platform_axis
-    gce_instance: *standardvm
+    # integration tests scale well with cpu as they are parallelized
+    # so we give these tests 4 cores to make them faster
+    gce_instance: &fastvm
+      <<: *standardvm
+      cpu: 4
     timeout_in: 50m
     env:
         TEST_FLAVOR: int
@@ -687,7 +691,7 @@ container_integration_test_task:
               CTR_FQIN: ${PRIOR_FEDORA_CONTAINER_FQIN}
               CI_DESIRED_RUNTIME: crun
               CI_DESIRED_DATABASE: boltdb
-    gce_instance: *standardvm
+    gce_instance: *fastvm
     timeout_in: 50m
     env:
         TEST_FLAVOR: int
@@ -706,7 +710,7 @@ rootless_integration_test_task:
     only_if: *not_tag_branch_build_docs_machine
     depends_on: *build
     matrix: *platform_axis
-    gce_instance: *standardvm
+    gce_instance: *fastvm
     timeout_in: 50m
     env:
         TEST_FLAVOR: int