Photon

Incredibly fast crawler designed for OSINT.

Features

Photon can extract the following data while crawling:

• URLs (in-scope & out-of-scope)
• URLs with parameters (example.com/gallery.php?id=2)
• Intel (emails, social media accounts, amazon buckets etc.)
• Files (pdf, png, xml etc.)
• Secret keys (auth/API keys & hashes)
• JavaScript files & Endpoints present in them
• Strings matching custom regex pattern
• Subdomains & DNS related data

Usage

Usage: photon [options]

Option	Description
-u, --url	root url
-l, --level	levels to crawl
-t, --threads	number of threads
-d, --delay	delay between requests
-c, --cookie	cookie
-r, --regex	regex pattern
-s, --seeds	additional seed urls
-e, --export	export formatted result
-o, --output	specify output directory
-v, --verbose	verbose output
--keys	extract secret keys
--clone	clone the website locally
--exclude	exclude urls by regex
--stdout	print a variable to stdout
--timeout	http requests timeout
--ninja	ninja mode
--update	update photon
--headers	supply http headers
--dns	enumerate subdomains & dns data
--only-urls	only extract urls
--wayback	Use URLs from archive.org as seeds
--user-agent	specify user-agent(s)

Examples

Crawl a Single Website

Option: -u or --url Crawl a single website.

python photon.py -u "http://example.com"

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Clone the Website Locally

Option: --clone The crawled webpages can be saved locally for later use.

python photon.py -u "http://example.com" --clone

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Depth of Crawling

Option: -l or --level Default: 2 Set recursion limit for crawling. A depth of 2 means Photon will find URLs from the homepage (level 1), then crawl those pages as well (level 2).

python photon.py -u "http://example.com" -l 3

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Number of Threads

Option: -t or --threads Default: 2 Specify the number of concurrent requests to make. Be cautious — higher values can trigger security mechanisms or overwhelm small sites.

python photon.py -u "http://example.com" -t 10

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Delay Between Each HTTP Request

Option: -d or --delay Default: 0 Delay (in seconds) between each HTTP(S) request.

python photon.py -u "http://example.com" -d 2

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Timeout

Option: --timeout Default: 5 Time (in seconds) to wait before considering a request timed out.

python photon.py -u "http://example.com" --timeout=4

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Cookies

Option: -c or --cookies Default: No cookie header sent Add a Cookie header to HTTP requests. Useful for authenticated sessions.

python photon.py -u "http://example.com" -c "PHPSESSID=u5423d78fqbaju9a0qke25ca87"

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Specify Output Directory

Option: -o or --output Default: Domain name of the target Override the default output directory.

python photon.py -u "http://example.com" -o "mydir"

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Verbose Output

Option: -v or --verbose Show all discovered items (pages, keys, files, etc.) in real time.

python photon.py -u "http://example.com" -v

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Exclude Specific URLs

Option: --exclude Exclude URLs matching the provided regex pattern.

python photon.py -u "http://example.com" --exclude="/blog/20[17|18]"

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Specify Seed URL(s)

Option: -s or --seeds Add custom seed URLs, separated by commas.

python photon.py -u "http://example.com" --seeds "http://example.com/blog/2018,http://example.com/portals.html"

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Specify User-Agent(s)

Option: --user-agent Default: Entries from user-agents.txt Set custom user-agent(s), separated by commas.

python photon.py -u "http://example.com" --user-agent "curl/7.35.0,Wget/1.15 (linux-gnu)"

This helps simulate different clients without editing the default file.

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Custom Regex Pattern

Option: -r or --regex Extract strings during crawling by providing a regex pattern.

python photon.py -u "http://example.com" --regex "\d{10}"

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Export Formatted Result

Option: -e or --export Specify the output format for saved data.

python photon.py -u "http://example.com" --export=json

Supported formats:

• json
• csv

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Use URLs from Archive.org as Seeds

Option: --wayback Fetch archived URLs from archive.org (only from the current year).

python photon.py -u "http://example.com" --wayback

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Skip Data Extraction

Option: --only-urls Crawl only the URLs; skip data extraction like JS files or intel.

python photon.py -u "http://example.com" --only-urls

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Update

Option: --update Check for a newer version of Photon and update in place.

python photon.py --update

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Extract Secret Keys

Option: --keys Look for high-entropy strings that may be auth/API keys or hashes.

python photon.py -u http://example.com --keys