diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index e4bd8868f..7e6646774 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -7,6 +7,10 @@ and this project adheres to [Semantic Versioning](https://semver.org/spec/v2.0.0
 
 ## [Unreleased](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-python/compare/v1.12.0rc1-0.31b0...HEAD)
 
+### Fixed
+- `opentelemetry-instrumentation-grpc` narrow protobuf dependency to exclude protobuf >= 4
+  ([1109](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-python-contrib/pull/1109))
+
 ## [1.12.0rc1-0.31b0](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-python/releases/tag/v1.12.0rc1-0.31b0) - 2022-05-17
 
 
diff --git a/dev-requirements.txt b/dev-requirements.txt
index 6ebc8ba7c..9ad388090 100644
--- a/dev-requirements.txt
+++ b/dev-requirements.txt
@@ -13,5 +13,5 @@ readme-renderer~=24.0
 bleach==4.1.0 # transient dependency for readme-renderer
 grpcio-tools==1.29.0
 mypy-protobuf>=1.23
-protobuf>=3.13.0
+protobuf~=3.13
 markupsafe==2.0.1
diff --git a/instrumentation/opentelemetry-instrumentation-grpc/setup.cfg b/instrumentation/opentelemetry-instrumentation-grpc/setup.cfg
index b5efba07a..375b56bf5 100644
--- a/instrumentation/opentelemetry-instrumentation-grpc/setup.cfg
+++ b/instrumentation/opentelemetry-instrumentation-grpc/setup.cfg
@@ -50,7 +50,7 @@ install_requires =
 test =
     opentelemetry-test-utils == 0.31b0
     opentelemetry-sdk ~= 1.3
-    protobuf >= 3.13.0
+    protobuf ~= 3.13
 
 [options.packages.find]
 where = src
diff --git a/tox.ini b/tox.ini
index ca1cea222..c698b9266 100644
--- a/tox.ini
+++ b/tox.ini
@@ -493,7 +493,7 @@ deps =
   sqlalchemy ~= 1.4
   redis ~= 4.2
   celery[pytest] >= 4.0, < 6.0
-  protobuf>=3.13.0
+  protobuf~=3.13
   requests==2.25.0
   pyodbc~=4.0.30
   flaky==3.7.0