diff --git a/gossipsub.go b/gossipsub.go
index dcc5d193..c22481af 100644
--- a/gossipsub.go
+++ b/gossipsub.go
@@ -1361,6 +1361,14 @@ func (gs *GossipSubRouter) doSendRPC(rpc *RPC, p peer.ID, q *rpcQueue, urgent bo
 	gs.tracer.SendRPC(rpc, p)
 }
 
+// maxProtobufOverhead denotes the protobuf encoding overhead for a message.
+// it is based on the RPC.Size function excerpt:
+// l = e.Size()
+// n += 1 + l + sovRpc(uint64(l))
+// where sovRpc is a number of bytes needed to encode some uint64 value.
+// Assuming that the message size is 10^10, the number of bytes needed to encode it is 5.
+const maxProtobufOverhead = 1 + 5
+
 // appendOrMergeRPC appends the given RPCs to the slice, merging them if possible.
 // If any elem is too large to fit in a single RPC, it will be split into multiple RPCs.
 // If an RPC is too large and can't be split further (e.g. Message data is
@@ -1384,16 +1392,21 @@ func appendOrMergeRPC(slice []*RPC, limit int, elems ...RPC) []*RPC {
 
 	for _, elem := range elems {
 		lastRPC := out[len(out)-1]
+		lastSize := lastRPC.Size()
 
 		// Merge/Append publish messages
 		// TODO: Never merge messages. The current behavior is the same as the
 		// old behavior. In the future let's not merge messages. Since,
 		// it may increase message latency.
 		for _, msg := range elem.GetPublish() {
-			if lastRPC.Publish = append(lastRPC.Publish, msg); lastRPC.Size() > limit {
+			lastRPC.Publish = append(lastRPC.Publish, msg)
+			// do not use lastRPC.Size() here to avoid lastRPC.Publish iteration calling Size on each element.
+			lastSize += msg.Size() + maxProtobufOverhead
+			if lastSize > limit {
 				lastRPC.Publish = lastRPC.Publish[:len(lastRPC.Publish)-1]
 				lastRPC = &RPC{RPC: pb.RPC{}, from: elem.from}
 				lastRPC.Publish = append(lastRPC.Publish, msg)
+				lastSize = lastRPC.Size() // single element calcualtion
 				out = append(out, lastRPC)
 			}
 		}
diff --git a/gossipsub_test.go b/gossipsub_test.go
index d515654f..eef6b9b4 100644
--- a/gossipsub_test.go
+++ b/gossipsub_test.go
@@ -2416,6 +2416,7 @@ func TestFragmentRPCFunction(t *testing.T) {
 	ensureBelowLimit(results)
 	msgsPerRPC := limit / msgSize
 	expectedRPCs := nMessages / msgsPerRPC
+	expectedRPCs += 1 // add one more message to account for message size approximation when fragmenting
 	if len(results) != expectedRPCs {
 		t.Fatalf("expected %d RPC messages in output, got %d", expectedRPCs, len(results))
 	}