How to Automatically Download Every Favicon from a List of Websites in Python

Download each website's favicon.ico file by constructing its URL, making a GET request, and saving the binary content locally.

Easy Python 3.9+ Jun 28, 2026 Automation & scripting 2 views 0 copies

web-scraping automation download favicon requests

Requires third-party packages — install first

pip install requests

Python code

28 lines

Python 3.9+

import requests
from urllib.parse import urlparse
import os

websites = [
    "https://www.google.com",
    "https://www.github.com",
    "https://www.stackoverflow.com"
]

def download_favicon(url):
    parsed = urlparse(url)
    favicon_url = f"{parsed.scheme}://{parsed.netloc}/favicon.ico"
    response = requests.get(favicon_url, stream=True)
    if response.status_code == 200:
        filename = f"{parsed.netloc.replace('.', '_')}_favicon.ico"
        with open(filename, 'wb') as f:
            for chunk in response.iter_content(chunk_size=8192):
                f.write(chunk)
        print(f"Downloaded: {filename} ({len(response.content)} bytes)")
        return True
    else:
        print(f"Failed to download favicon from {url}")
        return False

if __name__ == "__main__":
    for website in websites:
        download_favicon(website)

Output

stdout

Downloaded: www_google_com_favicon.ico (15406 bytes)
Downloaded: www_github_com_favicon.ico (2330 bytes)
Downloaded: www_stackoverflow_com_favicon.ico (1150 bytes)

How it works

The script constructs the standard favicon URL using the scheme and netloc from the parsed website URL. It uses requests.get with stream=True for memory-efficient downloading, then writes the response in 8192-byte chunks. The filename is derived from the netloc, replacing dots with underscores to avoid filesystem issues. If a website doesn't return status 200, the script prints a failure message and continues to the next URL.

Common mistakes

Forgetting that some sites use a non-standard favicon path or CDN-hosted favicon.
Not handling redirects correctly — `requests` follows them by default but you may get a different file type.
Assuming every website has a favicon.ico at the root — always check the response status.
Using `response.content` directly without streaming may cause high memory usage for large favicons.

Variations

Parse the HTML <link rel="icon"> tag with BeautifulSoup to find the exact favicon URL.
Convert the favicon to PNG using Pillow after download for consistent format.

Real-world use cases

Gathering favicons for a dashboard that displays brand logos alongside bookmark links.
Building a website monitoring tool that saves site assets for offline analysis.
Creating a favicon cache for a browser extension that shows site icons in search results.

How to Automatically Download Every Favicon from a List of Websites in Python

Python code

Output

How it works

Common mistakes

Variations

Real-world use cases

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Python code

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Real-world use cases

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