diff --git a/docs/intro/tutorial.rst b/docs/intro/tutorial.rst
index d61b373ba..94e27386c 100644
--- a/docs/intro/tutorial.rst
+++ b/docs/intro/tutorial.rst
@@ -150,8 +150,7 @@ delay for that domain only:
         "quotes.toscrape.com": {"concurrency": 16, "delay": 0.1},
     }
 
-The polite defaults still apply to every other website. Remove this entry once
-you move on to crawling your own sites.
+The polite defaults still apply to every other website.
 
 How to run our spider
 ---------------------
diff --git a/scrapy/utils/_headers.py b/scrapy/utils/_headers.py
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..21352858c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/scrapy/utils/_headers.py
@@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
+from __future__ import annotations
+
+import datetime as dt
+from email.utils import parsedate_to_datetime
+from typing import TYPE_CHECKING
+
+if TYPE_CHECKING:
+    from scrapy.http import Response
+
+
+def _decoded_header(response: Response, name: str) -> str | None:
+    """Return the stripped UTF-8 value of the *name* header of *response*, or
+    ``None`` if it is absent or not valid UTF-8."""
+    raw = response.headers.get(name)
+    if not raw:
+        return None
+    try:
+        return raw.decode("utf-8").strip()
+    except UnicodeDecodeError:
+        return None
+
+
+def _parse_retry_after(response: Response) -> float | None:
+    value = _decoded_header(response, "Retry-After")
+    if value is None:
+        return None
+    if value.isdigit():
+        return float(value)  # seconds
+    try:
+        date = parsedate_to_datetime(value)
+    except (TypeError, ValueError, OverflowError):
+        return None
+    if date.tzinfo is None:
+        date = date.replace(tzinfo=dt.timezone.utc)
+    now = dt.datetime.now(dt.timezone.utc)
+    seconds_to_wait = (date - now).total_seconds()
+    # Keep sub-second precision (a date less than a second away must not be
+    # truncated to 0 and dropped); a past or present date yields no delay.
+    return max(0.0, seconds_to_wait) or None
+
+
+def _parse_ratelimit_reset(response: Response) -> float | None:
+    value = _decoded_header(response, "RateLimit-Reset")
+    if value is None:
+        return None
+    try:
+        return float(value)
+    except ValueError:
+        return None