diff --git a/docs/index.rst b/docs/index.rst
index a7503db3e..a442c0fd3 100644
--- a/docs/index.rst
+++ b/docs/index.rst
@@ -139,6 +139,7 @@ Solving specific problems
    topics/ubuntu
    topics/scrapyd
    topics/autothrottle
+   topics/benchmarking
    topics/jobs
    topics/djangoitem
 
@@ -178,6 +179,9 @@ Solving specific problems
 :doc:`topics/autothrottle`
     Adjust crawl rate dynamically based on load.
 
+:doc:`topics/benchmarking`
+    Check how Scrapy performs on your hardware.
+
 :doc:`topics/jobs`
     Learn how to pause and resume crawls for large spiders.
 
diff --git a/docs/topics/benchmarking.rst b/docs/topics/benchmarking.rst
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..1dcd8357d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/docs/topics/benchmarking.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,58 @@
+.. _benchmarking:
+
+============
+Benchmarking
+============
+
+Scrapy comes with a simple benchmarking suite that spawns a local HTTP server
+and crawls it at the maximum possible speed. The goal of this benchmarking is
+to get a measurement of how Scrapy performs in your hardware, and compare it to
+other machines using a simple spider as baseline.
+
+To run it use::
+
+    scrapy bench
+
+You should see an output like this::
+
+    2013-05-16 13:08:46-0300 [scrapy] INFO: Scrapy 0.17.0 started (bot: scrapybot)
+    2013-05-16 13:08:47-0300 [follow] INFO: Spider opened
+    2013-05-16 13:08:47-0300 [follow] INFO: Crawled 0 pages (at 0 pages/min), scraped 0 items (at 0 items/min)
+    2013-05-16 13:08:48-0300 [follow] INFO: Crawled 74 pages (at 4440 pages/min), scraped 0 items (at 0 items/min)
+    2013-05-16 13:08:49-0300 [follow] INFO: Crawled 143 pages (at 4140 pages/min), scraped 0 items (at 0 items/min)
+    2013-05-16 13:08:50-0300 [follow] INFO: Crawled 210 pages (at 4020 pages/min), scraped 0 items (at 0 items/min)
+    2013-05-16 13:08:51-0300 [follow] INFO: Crawled 274 pages (at 3840 pages/min), scraped 0 items (at 0 items/min)
+    2013-05-16 13:08:52-0300 [follow] INFO: Crawled 343 pages (at 4140 pages/min), scraped 0 items (at 0 items/min)
+    2013-05-16 13:08:53-0300 [follow] INFO: Crawled 410 pages (at 4020 pages/min), scraped 0 items (at 0 items/min)
+    2013-05-16 13:08:54-0300 [follow] INFO: Crawled 474 pages (at 3840 pages/min), scraped 0 items (at 0 items/min)
+    2013-05-16 13:08:55-0300 [follow] INFO: Crawled 538 pages (at 3840 pages/min), scraped 0 items (at 0 items/min)
+    2013-05-16 13:08:56-0300 [follow] INFO: Crawled 602 pages (at 3840 pages/min), scraped 0 items (at 0 items/min)
+    2013-05-16 13:08:57-0300 [follow] INFO: Closing spider (closespider_timeout)
+    2013-05-16 13:08:57-0300 [follow] INFO: Crawled 666 pages (at 3840 pages/min), scraped 0 items (at 0 items/min)
+    2013-05-16 13:08:57-0300 [follow] INFO: Dumping Scrapy stats:
+        {'downloader/request_bytes': 231508,
+         'downloader/request_count': 682,
+         'downloader/request_method_count/GET': 682,
+         'downloader/response_bytes': 1172802,
+         'downloader/response_count': 682,
+         'downloader/response_status_count/200': 682,
+         'finish_reason': 'closespider_timeout',
+         'finish_time': datetime.datetime(2013, 5, 16, 16, 8, 57, 985539),
+         'log_count/INFO': 14,
+         'request_depth_max': 34,
+         'response_received_count': 682,
+         'scheduler/dequeued': 682,
+         'scheduler/dequeued/memory': 682,
+         'scheduler/enqueued': 12767,
+         'scheduler/enqueued/memory': 12767,
+         'start_time': datetime.datetime(2013, 5, 16, 16, 8, 47, 676539)}
+    2013-05-16 13:08:57-0300 [follow] INFO: Spider closed (closespider_timeout)
+
+That tells you that Scrapy is able to crawl about 3900 pages per minute in the
+hardware where you run it. Note that this is a very simple spider intended to
+follow links, any custom spider you write will probably do more stuff which
+results in slower crawl rates. How slower depends on how much your spider does
+and how well it's written.
+
+In the future, more cases will be added to the benchmarking suite to cover
+other common scenarios.
diff --git a/docs/topics/commands.rst b/docs/topics/commands.rst
index 5e27afaaf..5ccc75129 100644
--- a/docs/topics/commands.rst
+++ b/docs/topics/commands.rst
@@ -149,6 +149,7 @@ Project-only commands:
 * :command:`genspider`
 * :command:`server`
 * :command:`deploy`
+* :command:`bench`
 
 .. command:: startproject
 
@@ -457,6 +458,18 @@ deploy
 
 Deploy the project into a Scrapyd server. See `Deploying your project`_.
 
+.. command:: bench
+
+bench
+-----
+
+.. versionadded:: 0.17
+
+* Syntax: ``scrapy bench``
+* Requires project: *no*
+
+Run quick benchmark test. :ref:`benchmarking`.
+
 Custom project commands
 =======================
 
diff --git a/scrapy/commands/bench.py b/scrapy/commands/bench.py
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..93b3a0552
--- /dev/null
+++ b/scrapy/commands/bench.py
@@ -0,0 +1,20 @@
+from scrapy.command import ScrapyCommand
+from scrapy.tests.spiders import FollowAllSpider
+from scrapy.tests.mockserver import MockServer
+
+class Command(ScrapyCommand):
+
+    default_settings = {
+        'LOG_LEVEL': 'INFO',
+        'LOGSTATS_INTERVAL': 1,
+        'CLOSESPIDER_TIMEOUT': 10,
+    }
+
+    def short_desc(self):
+        return "Run quick benchmark test"
+
+    def run(self, args, opts):
+        with MockServer():
+            spider = FollowAllSpider(total=100000)
+            self.crawler.crawl(spider)
+            self.crawler.start()