An extracellular β-glucosidase was isolated from Proteus mirabilis VIT117 found to be growing on prawn shells. The enzyme production was found to be enhanced (14.58 U/ml) when the culture was maintained at pH 9 and provided with sorbitol as carbon source, yeast extract as nitrogen source and incubated at 37 °C for approximately 72 h. Statistical methods like Plackett–Burman and RSM were also applied here to study the effects of different combinations of growth parameters for the bacteria, where the most significant parameters were found to be inoculum size, pH, yeast extract, incubation time and sorbitol. The optimum concentrations of inoculum size, pH and yeast extract determined by RSM were 2 %, 9 and 2 %, respectively. Partial purification of the protein was done by ammonium sulfate precipitation, followed by dialysis, gel filtration chromatography and SDS-PAGE. The enzyme was found to have a molecular weight of approximately 50 kDa and was observed to be most active at 37 °C in pH 9, with a sharp decline in the enzyme activity when temperature or the pH was increased. Enzyme kinetics study was performed to understand the catalytic behavior of the enzyme and it was found that our β-glucosidase had 5.613 U/ml and 0.082 mM as Vmax and Km values, respectively. © 2016, The Author(s).