difference between curl and wget commands

Difference Between Curl and wget Commands

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In this tutorial, we are going to explain the main difference between the curl and wget commands in Linux with examples.

These two commands are very often used by system administrators and other Linux users on daily basis. Curl is a free and open-source utility that offers to transfer data between remote machines. Wget is also a free command line utility that offers transferring files using HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, and FTPS. Wget is a simple transfer utility, while curl offers so much more.

In this tutorial we are going to execute the commands on Ubuntu 22.04 but you can choose any Linux distro. Let’s get started!

What is Curl

Curl is a shortcut of client URL and is used for transferring data using various network protocols. Curl uses libcurl (free client-side URL transfer library) and supports every protocol that libcurl supports. Curl supports downloading and uploading via HTTP, HTPPS, FTP, IMAP, LDAP, and many more protocols. Curl let the user interact with the remote server and it can also work with proxies, support automatic decompression of compressed files and let us download multiple transfers in parallel.

Installing the Curl

Before we can use the curl command, we need to install it on our system. To do that execute the following command:

sudo apt-get install curl

After successfull installation, check the installed curl version.

curl -V

You should receive an output similar to this:

root@host:~# curl -V
curl 7.68.0 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) libcurl/7.68.0 OpenSSL/1.1.1f zlib/1.2.11 brotli/1.0.7 libidn2/2.2.0 libpsl/0.21.0 (+libidn2/2.2.0) libssh/0.9.3/openssl/zlib nghttp2/1.40.0 librtmp/2.3
Release-Date: 2020-01-08
Protocols: dict file ftp ftps gopher http https imap imaps ldap ldaps pop3 pop3s rtmp rtsp scp sftp smb smbs smtp smtps telnet tftp
Features: AsynchDNS brotli GSS-API HTTP2 HTTPS-proxy IDN IPv6 Kerberos Largefile libz NTLM NTLM_WB PSL SPNEGO SSL TLS-SRP UnixSockets

Some basic Curl commands

In this paragraph, we are going to show you some basic curl commands with examples.

Download a website and print the output in file.

curl https://google.com -o google.html

Once executed, you will receive the following output:

root@host:/opt# curl https://google.com -o google.html
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100   220  100   220    0     0    750      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--   750

The -o flag is used to redirect the output to a file.

To return only the HTTP headers, execute the following command:

curl -I https://google.com

You should receive output similar to this:

root@host:/opt# curl -I https://google.com
HTTP/2 301
location: https://www.google.com/
content-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
date: Fri, 02 Sep 2022 13:22:23 GMT
expires: Sun, 02 Oct 2022 13:22:23 GMT
cache-control: public, max-age=2592000
server: gws
content-length: 220
x-xss-protection: 0
x-frame-options: SAMEORIGIN
alt-svc: h3=":443"; ma=2592000,h3-29=":443"; ma=2592000,h3-Q050=":443"; ma=2592000,h3-Q046=":443"; ma=2592000,h3-Q043=":443"; ma=2592000,quic=":443"; ma=2592000; v="46,43"

To check if HTTP/2 is supported, execute the command below:

curl -I --http2 https://domain.com

If the site does support HTTP/2, you will see HTTP/2.0 200 in the header instead of HTTP/1.1 200.

HTTP/2.0 200 OK
Date: Fri, 02 Sep 2022 13:35:32 GMT
Server: Apache/2.4.41 (Ubuntu)
Content-Type: text/html;charset=UTF-8

What is Wget

Wget, the same as Curl is a free command line utility that offers to transfer files using the HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, and FTPS protocols. Wget retrieves the content recursively from the Web and supports recursive background downloads, mirrors, directories, and many more.

Installing the Wget

Before we can use the wget command, we need to install it on our system. To do that, execute the following command:

sudo apt-get install wget

After successfull installation, check the installed wget version.

wget -V

You should receive an output similar to this:

root@host:~# wget -V
GNU Wget 1.20.3 built on linux-gnu.

-cares +digest -gpgme +https +ipv6 +iri +large-file -metalink +nls
+ntlm +opie +psl +ssl/openssl

Wgetrc:
    /etc/wgetrc (system)
Locale:
    /usr/share/locale

Some basic Wget commands

To download the website using wget execute the following command:

wget google.com

The html content of the website will be automatically saved in index.html file:

root@host:~# wget google.com
--2022-09-02 19:52:49--  http://google.com/
Resolving google.com (google.com)... 172.217.0.174, 2607:f8b0:4009:803::200e
Connecting to google.com (google.com)|172.217.0.174|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 301 Moved Permanently
Location: http://www.google.com/ [following]
--2022-09-02 19:52:49--  http://www.google.com/
Resolving www.google.com (www.google.com)... 172.217.4.196, 2607:f8b0:4004:c1b::63, 2607:f8b0:4004:c1b::93, ...
Connecting to www.google.com (www.google.com)|172.217.4.196|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: unspecified [text/html]
Saving to: ‘index.html’

index.html                                  [ <=>                                                                                  ]  13.67K  --.-KB/s    in 0.006s

2022-09-02 19:52:49 (2.36 MB/s) - ‘index.html’ saved [13993]

To download the web files in the background execute the wget command with -b parameter:

wget -b https://google.com

You will get the following message:

root@host:~# wget -b https://google.com
Continuing in background, pid 226490.
Output will be written to ‘wget-log’.

Differences between curl and wget commands

In the previous paragraph, we explained the curl and wget separately, and in this paragraph, we will summarize the main differences in a simple list.

  • curl supports SOCKS, while wget does not.
  • curl output is not redirected automatically in the file, while with wget it is.
  • curl supports more protocols than wget
  • wget supports recursive downloads while curl does not.
  • wget does not perform transfer-encoded HTTP decompressions, while curl does.
  • Curl provides the libcurl library
  • wget requires gnulib installed.

Hopefully, our guide on the difference between Curl and get commands was of help to you. We would love to hear from you now:

Did we skip something essential or do you need a more detailed explanation about any of the steps?

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