Katana

Next-gen web crawling and spidering tool by ProjectDiscovery

Recon & OSINT12 commands

#crawler#spider#recon#discovery#projectdiscovery

Installation

1Install using Go

2Download from GitHub

3Verify installation

# Using Go
go install github.com/projectdiscovery/katana/cmd/katana@latest

# Verify
katana --version

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

Basic Usage

Crawl websites to discover endpoints, URLs, and JavaScript files

# Basic crawl
katana -u https://example.com

# With depth control
katana -u https://example.com -d 3

# Passive mode (no active crawling)
katana -u https://example.com -p

# Output all URLs including subdomains
katana -u https://example.com -subs

# Extract JavaScript files
katana -u https://example.com -jc

# Save to file
katana -u https://example.com -o urls.txt

Command Reference

12 commands

1Target URL

-u

2Crawl depth

-d

3Passive mode (no active requests)

-p

4Include subdomains

-subs

5Extract JavaScript files

-jc

6Keep URL fragments

-kf

7Maximum URLs to crawl

-m

8Output file

-o

9HTTP proxy

-proxy

10Custom headers

-H

11Request timeout

-timeout

12Number of concurrent requests

-concurrency

When to Use

Comprehensive web crawling for asset discovery

Finding hidden endpoints and JavaScript files

Passive recon without triggering alerts

Mapping application attack surface

Building custom wordlists from live endpoints

Notes & Tips

Built by ProjectDiscovery — actively maintained

Supports both active crawling and passive parsing

Can be combined with httpx for status filtering

Much faster than traditional crawlers like Burp Spider

Common Errors & Solutions

Too many URLs

Limit crawl with -m flag or reduce depth with -d

Missing JavaScript URLs

Use -jc flag to specifically extract JS files

# Basic crawl katana -u https://example.com # With depth control katana -u https://example.com -d 3 # Passive mode (no active crawling) katana -u https://example.com -p # Output all URLs including subdomains katana -u https://example.com -subs # Extract JavaScript files katana -u https://example.com -jc # Save to file katana -u https://example.com -o urls.txt