diff --git a/docs/Makefile b/docs/Makefile
index 187f03c4c..ff68bf1ae 100644
--- a/docs/Makefile
+++ b/docs/Makefile
@@ -82,6 +82,9 @@ pydoc-topics: build
 	@echo "Building finished; now copy build/pydoc-topics/pydoc_topics.py " \
 	      "into the Lib/ directory"
 
+coverage: BUILDER = coverage
+coverage: build
+
 htmlview: html
 	 $(PYTHON) -c "import webbrowser, os; webbrowser.open('file://' + \
 	 os.path.realpath('build/html/index.html'))"
diff --git a/docs/conf.py b/docs/conf.py
index a54a6bbe9..832626f6b 100644
--- a/docs/conf.py
+++ b/docs/conf.py
@@ -28,7 +28,8 @@ sys.path.insert(0, path.dirname(path.dirname(__file__)))
 # coming with Sphinx (named 'sphinx.ext.*') or your custom ones.
 extensions = [
     'scrapydocs',
-    'sphinx.ext.autodoc'
+    'sphinx.ext.autodoc',
+    'sphinx.ext.coverage',
 ]
 
 # Add any paths that contain templates here, relative to this directory.
@@ -218,3 +219,9 @@ linkcheck_ignore = [
     'http://localhost:\d+', 'http://hg.scrapy.org',
     'http://directory.google.com/'
 ]
+
+
+# Options for the Coverage extension
+# ----------------------------------
+coverage_ignore_pyobjects = [
+]
diff --git a/docs/contributing.rst b/docs/contributing.rst
index 51b5da59e..b4f91ea8d 100644
--- a/docs/contributing.rst
+++ b/docs/contributing.rst
@@ -99,6 +99,15 @@ Well-written patches should:
   the documentation changes in the same patch.  See `Documentation policies`_
   below.
 
+* if you're adding a private API, please add a regular expression to the
+  ``coverage_ignore_pyobjects`` variable of ``docs/conf.py`` to exclude the new
+  private API from documentation coverage checks.
+
+  To see if your private API is skipped properly, generate a documentation
+  coverage report as follows::
+
+      tox -e docs-coverage
+
 .. _submitting-patches:
 
 Submitting patches
diff --git a/docs/requirements.txt b/docs/requirements.txt
index 8e7611d21..379da9994 100644
--- a/docs/requirements.txt
+++ b/docs/requirements.txt
@@ -1,2 +1,2 @@
-Sphinx>=1.6
+Sphinx>=2.1
 sphinx_rtd_theme
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/tox.ini b/tox.ini
index 0c0f8f7b7..157a8b3ed 100644
--- a/tox.ini
+++ b/tox.ini
@@ -105,6 +105,12 @@ deps = {[docs]deps}
 commands =
     sphinx-build -W -b html . {envtmpdir}/html
 
+[testenv:docs-coverage]
+changedir = {[docs]changedir}
+deps = {[docs]deps}
+commands =
+    sphinx-build -b coverage . {envtmpdir}/coverage
+
 [testenv:docs-links]
 changedir = {[docs]changedir}
 deps = {[docs]deps}