diff --git a/CMakeLists.txt b/CMakeLists.txt
index 4832e4981..9d2ab2875 100644
--- a/CMakeLists.txt
+++ b/CMakeLists.txt
@@ -280,6 +280,32 @@ if(ENABLE_LTO AND NOT CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE STREQUAL "Debug")
     endif()
 endif()
 
+# Release and MinSizeRel drop the symbol table and the unwind metadata; Debug and RelWithDebInfo keep
+# both, so those stay fully debuggable. CMake does not strip MinSizeRel on its own.
+if(CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE STREQUAL "Release" OR CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE STREQUAL "MinSizeRel")
+    # The symbol table is dead weight: 437 KB (16%) of a MinGW build, 91 KB (3%) of a GCC build.
+    set(CMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS "${CMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS} -Wl,-s")
+
+    # Drops .eh_frame / .eh_frame_hdr on ELF (74 KB) and .pdata / .xdata on PE (26 KB). Every C++
+    # translation unit here is built with -fno-exceptions -fno-rtti and no source file contains a
+    # single try / catch, so no exception can ever unwind through these frames. The only loss is
+    # backtrace() / gdb / perf / crash-dump stack walking in a release binary.
+    set(CMAKE_C_FLAGS "${CMAKE_C_FLAGS} -fno-asynchronous-unwind-tables")
+    set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS} -fno-asynchronous-unwind-tables")
+
+    if(NOT WIN32 AND NOT APPLE AND NOT ANDROID)
+        # Drops .rela.dyn (250 KB) and .data.rel.ro (169 KB) on ELF and removes every load-time
+        # relocation, so startup gets faster too. The cost is ASLR, and a distro that builds with
+        # hardening=+all / %_hardened_build passes -fPIE -pie and overrides this anyway.
+        # Skipped on Windows (PE has no PIE, clang warns "-no-pie unused"), on macOS (Mach-O has no
+        # .rela.dyn, and turning PIE off fights the code-signing defaults) and on Android, which
+        # rejects non-PIE executables outright.
+        set(CMAKE_C_FLAGS "${CMAKE_C_FLAGS} -fno-pie")
+        set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS} -fno-pie")
+        set(CMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS "${CMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS} -no-pie")
+    endif()
+endif()
+
 #######################
 # Target FS structure #
 #######################