diff --git a/tonic-build/Cargo.toml b/tonic-build/Cargo.toml
index e116af9d7..46ad3af43 100644
--- a/tonic-build/Cargo.toml
+++ b/tonic-build/Cargo.toml
@@ -25,7 +25,7 @@ syn = "2.0"
 [features]
 default = ["transport", "prost"]
 prost = ["prost-build", "dep:prost-types"]
-cleanup-markdown = ["prost", "prost-build/cleanup-markdown"]
+cleanup-markdown = ["prost-build?/cleanup-markdown"]
 transport = []
 
 [package.metadata.docs.rs]
diff --git a/tonic-build/src/lib.rs b/tonic-build/src/lib.rs
index 44b3b44aa..981655c1b 100644
--- a/tonic-build/src/lib.rs
+++ b/tonic-build/src/lib.rs
@@ -4,7 +4,8 @@
 //! # Feature flags
 //!
 //! - `cleanup-markdown`: Enables cleaning up documentation from the generated code. Useful
-//!   when documentation of the generated code fails `cargo test --doc` for example.
+//!   when documentation of the generated code fails `cargo test --doc` for example. The
+//!   `prost` feature must be enabled to use this feature.
 //! - `prost`: Enables usage of prost generator (enabled by default).
 //! - `transport`: Enables generation of `connect` method using `tonic::transport::Channel`
 //!   (enabled by default).