Certain aspects of the present disclosure provide techniques for Aspects of the present disclosure relate to wireless communications, and more particularly, to techniques for determining a minimal list size to use in list decoding operations for reducing resource consumption (e.g., compute, memory, and power) at a decoder. A method includes receiving a codeword comprising a plurality of channel bits encoded with an error-correcting code, the plurality of channel bits comprising, at least, a plurality of information bits, determining a payload size of the codeword, determining a channel capacity metric for the plurality of channel bits, determining a minimal list size for a list decoding operation based on at least the payload size and the channel capacity metric; and performing the list decoding operation on the codeword based on the minimal list size to obtain the plurality of information bits.