A next-generation crawling and spidering framework

Features • Installation • Usage • Scope • Config • Filters • Join Discord

Features

• Fast And fully configurable web crawling
• Standard and Headless mode
• JavaScript parsing / crawling
• Customizable automatic form filling
• Scope control - Preconfigured field / Regex
• Knowledge base - ML page-type / form classification (auto-downloaded model)
• Customizable output - Preconfigured fields
• INPUT - STDIN, URL and LIST
• OUTPUT - STDOUT, FILE and JSON

Installation

katana requires Go 1.26+ to install successfully. If you encounter any installation issues, we recommend trying with the latest available version of Go, as the minimum required version may have changed. Run the command below or download a pre-compiled binary from the release page.

CGO_ENABLED=1 go install github.com/projectdiscovery/katana/cmd/katana@latest

More options to install / run katana-

docker pull projectdiscovery/katana:latest

docker run projectdiscovery/katana:latest -u https://tesla.com

docker run projectdiscovery/katana:latest -u https://tesla.com -system-chrome -headless

sudo apt update
sudo apt install zip curl wget git snapd
sudo snap refresh
sudo snap install golang --classic

sudo install -d -m 0755 /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://dl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub \
  | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/google-chrome.gpg

echo "deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/google-chrome.gpg] \
  http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main" \
  | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-chrome.list > /dev/null

sudo apt update
sudo apt install google-chrome-stable

go install github.com/projectdiscovery/katana/cmd/katana@latest

Usage

katana -h

This will display help for the tool. Here are all the switches it supports.

Katana is a fast crawler focused on execution in automation
pipelines offering both headless and non-headless crawling.

Usage:
  ./katana [flags]

Flags:
INPUT:
   -u, -list string[]     target url / list to crawl
   -resume string         resume scan using resume.cfg
   -e, -exclude string[]  exclude host matching specified filter ('cdn', 'private-ips', cidr, ip, regex)

CONFIGURATION:
   -r, -resolvers string[]       list of custom resolver (file or comma separated)
   -d, -depth int                maximum depth to crawl (default 3)
   -jc, -js-crawl                enable endpoint parsing / crawling in javascript file
   -jsl, -jsluice                enable jsluice parsing in javascript file (memory intensive)
   -ct, -crawl-duration value    maximum duration to crawl the target for (s, m, h, d) (default s)
   -kf, -known-files string      enable crawling of known files (all,robotstxt,sitemapxml), a minimum depth of 3 is required to ensure all known files are properly crawled.
   -mrs, -max-response-size int  maximum response size to read (default 4194304)
   -timeout int                  time to wait for request in seconds (default 10)
   -aff, -automatic-form-fill    enable automatic form filling (experimental)
   -fx, -form-extraction         extract form, input, textarea & select elements in jsonl output
   -retry int                    number of times to retry the request (default 1)
   -proxy string                 http/socks5 proxy to use
   -td, -tech-detect             enable technology detection
   -H, -headers string[]         custom header/cookie to include in all http request in header:value format (file)
   -config string                path to the katana configuration file
   -fc, -form-config string      path to custom form configuration file
   -flc, -field-config string    path to custom field configuration file
   -s, -strategy string          Visit strategy (depth-first, breadth-first) (default "depth-first")
   -iqp, -ignore-query-params    Ignore crawling same path with different query-param values
   -fsu, -filter-similar         filter crawling of similar looking URLs (e.g., /users/123 and /users/456)
   -fst, -filter-similar-threshold int  number of distinct values before a path position is treated as parameter (default 10)
   -tlsi, -tls-impersonate       enable experimental client hello (ja3) tls randomization
   -dr, -disable-redirects       disable following redirects (default false)
   -pcs, -page-content-similar   enable page content similarity filtering (simhash|tfidf|bm25)
   -pcsm, -page-content-similar-mode string  similarity mode: simhash, tfidf, or bm25 (default simhash)
   -pcsd, -page-content-similar-distance int  simhash max hamming distance (default 3)
   -pcst, -page-content-similar-threshold float  tfidf/bm25 min score 0-1 (default 0.85)
   -pcsn, -page-content-similar-budget int  pages to fully process per similarity cluster (default 1)
   -sdd, -similarity-deduplication  alias for -pcs
   -kb, -knowledge-base          enable knowledge base classification
   -kb-secrets                   enable secrets extractor in the knowledge base
   -kb-validate-secrets          validate detected secrets against their provider (sends live API calls)
   -kb-endpoints                 enable endpoints extractor (classifies REST/GraphQL/SOAP/XHR requests)
   -mdp, -max-domain-pages int   maximum number of pages to crawl per domain (default unlimited)

DEBUG:
   -health-check, -hc        run diagnostic check up
   -elog, -error-log string  file to write sent requests error log
   -pprof-server             enable pprof server