diff --git a/AlluraTest/alluratest/controller.py b/AlluraTest/alluratest/controller.py
index 040677cb7..1c4cf32b6 100644
--- a/AlluraTest/alluratest/controller.py
+++ b/AlluraTest/alluratest/controller.py
@@ -178,7 +178,7 @@ def setup_method(self, method=None):
         pkg = self.__module__.split('.')[0]
         self.app = ValidatingTestApp(  # inherits from webtest.TestApp ultimately
             setup_functional_test(app_name=self.application_under_test, current_pkg=pkg),
-            parser_features=BeautifulSoup.DEFAULT_BUILDER_FEATURES,  # fastest parser (WebTest defaults to html.parser)
+            parser_features='lxml',  # fastest parser (WebTest defaults to html.parser)
         )
         self.app.extra_environ = {'REMOTE_ADDR': '127.0.0.1'}  # remote_addr needed by AntiSpam
         if self.validate_skip:
diff --git a/requirements-dev.txt b/requirements-dev.txt
index 4e4a7bfab..ec1568631 100644
--- a/requirements-dev.txt
+++ b/requirements-dev.txt
@@ -1,7 +1,6 @@
 # development-only dependencies
 # nothing needed at runtime or for tests
 
-lxml  # faster resp.html parsing in tests
 pip-tools
 q
 sphinx-argparse
diff --git a/requirements.in b/requirements.in
index 6fb6277ad..a4407483d 100644
--- a/requirements.in
+++ b/requirements.in
@@ -14,6 +14,8 @@ FormEncode
 GitPython
 html5lib
 Jinja2
+# for faster resp.html parsing in tests
+lxml
 Markdown
 markdown-checklist
 MarkupSafe
diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index 568db932c..0632831ab 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -128,6 +128,8 @@ jmespath==1.0.1
     #   botocore
 joserfc==0.9.0
     # via beaker-session-jwt
+lxml==5.3.0
+    # via -r requirements.in
 markdown==3.6
     # via
     #   -r requirements.in