diff --git a/scrapy/tests/test_utils_response.py b/scrapy/tests/test_utils_response.py
index 3337b80d6..99f1d0ea8 100644
--- a/scrapy/tests/test_utils_response.py
+++ b/scrapy/tests/test_utils_response.py
@@ -122,6 +122,15 @@ class ResponseUtilsTest(unittest.TestCase):
         response = TextResponse(url='http://example.com', body=body)
         self.assertEqual(get_meta_refresh(response), (3, 'http://example.com/'))
 
+        # float refresh intervals
+        body = """<meta http-equiv="refresh" content=".1;URL=index.html" />"""
+        response = TextResponse(url='http://example.com', body=body)
+        self.assertEqual(get_meta_refresh(response), (0.1, 'http://example.com/index.html'))
+
+        body = """<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="3.1;URL=index.html" />"""
+        response = TextResponse(url='http://example.com', body=body)
+        self.assertEqual(get_meta_refresh(response), (3.1, 'http://example.com/index.html'))
+
     def test_response_httprepr(self):
         r1 = Response("http://www.example.com")
         self.assertEqual(response_httprepr(r1), 'HTTP/1.1 200 OK\r\n\r\n')
diff --git a/scrapy/utils/response.py b/scrapy/utils/response.py
index a691d8875..0f44a6f5a 100644
--- a/scrapy/utils/response.py
+++ b/scrapy/utils/response.py
@@ -36,7 +36,7 @@ def get_base_url(response):
         _baseurl_cache[response] = urljoin_rfc(response.url, match.group(1)) if match else response.url
     return _baseurl_cache[response]
 
-META_REFRESH_RE = re.compile(ur'<meta[^>]*http-equiv[^>]*refresh[^>]*content\s*=\s*(?P<quote>["\'])(?P<int>\d+)\s*;\s*url=(?P<url>.*?)(?P=quote)', \
+META_REFRESH_RE = re.compile(ur'<meta[^>]*http-equiv[^>]*refresh[^>]*content\s*=\s*(?P<quote>["\'])(?P<int>(\d*\.)?\d+)\s*;\s*url=(?P<url>.*?)(?P=quote)', \
     re.DOTALL | re.IGNORECASE)
 _metaref_cache = weakref.WeakKeyDictionary()
 def get_meta_refresh(response):
@@ -51,7 +51,7 @@ def get_meta_refresh(response):
         body_chunk = remove_comments(remove_entities(response.body_as_unicode()[0:4096]))
         match = META_REFRESH_RE.search(body_chunk)
         if match:
-            interval = int(match.group('int'))
+            interval = float(match.group('int'))
             url = safe_url_string(match.group('url').strip(' "\''))
             url = urljoin_rfc(response.url, url)
             _metaref_cache[response] = (interval, url)