diff --git a/scrapy/crawler.py b/scrapy/crawler.py
index e0524021a..eb174a7d8 100644
--- a/scrapy/crawler.py
+++ b/scrapy/crawler.py
@@ -96,7 +96,12 @@ class CrawlerRunner(object):
     def _create_crawler(self, spidercls):
         if isinstance(spidercls, six.string_types):
             spidercls = self.spiders.load(spidercls)
-        crawler = Crawler(spidercls, self.settings.frozencopy())
+
+        crawler_settings = self.settings.copy()
+        spidercls.update_settings(crawler_settings)
+        crawler_settings.freeze()
+
+        crawler = Crawler(spidercls, crawler_settings)
         return crawler
 
     def stop(self):
diff --git a/scrapy/settings/__init__.py b/scrapy/settings/__init__.py
index 938b93564..af0d0dff1 100644
--- a/scrapy/settings/__init__.py
+++ b/scrapy/settings/__init__.py
@@ -15,6 +15,7 @@ SETTINGS_PRIORITIES = {
     'default': 0,
     'command': 10,
     'project': 20,
+    'spider': 30,
     'cmdline': 40,
 }
 
diff --git a/scrapy/spider.py b/scrapy/spider.py
index 943925042..0b13d2ee6 100644
--- a/scrapy/spider.py
+++ b/scrapy/spider.py
@@ -20,6 +20,7 @@ class Spider(object_ref):
     """
 
     name = None
+    custom_settings = {}
 
     def __init__(self, name=None, **kwargs):
         if name is not None:
@@ -66,6 +67,10 @@ class Spider(object_ref):
     def parse(self, response):
         raise NotImplementedError
 
+    @classmethod
+    def update_settings(cls, settings):
+        settings.setdict(cls.custom_settings, priority='spider')
+
     @classmethod
     def handles_request(cls, request):
         return url_is_from_spider(request.url, cls)