Differences Between Curl and Wget

Nilesh Katuwal Mar 29, 2022 Linux Linux Command
  1. Installing wget and curl in Linux
  2. Using curl to Access a Website in Linux
  3. Use the wget to Access a Website in Linux
  4. Difference Between curl and wget in Linux
  5. the wget in Contrast to the curl Command in Linux
Differences Between Curl and Wget

We normally think about pushing the download button while downloading files from the internet. You can, however, download files from your terminal.

The wget and curl are two of the most common tools for doing so. This tutorial will look at these two and see how they differ.

The curl command allows you to send data from any server to your computer. The wget command, on the other hand, downloads the data as a file.

This is the most significant distinction between the two commands.

Installing wget and curl in Linux

If you don’t have wget and curl installed, you can download using the command below.

Use the following command to install curl on your system:

#Debian and Ubuntu Systems
sudo apt install curl
  
#Arch Linux
sudo pacman -S curl

Use the following command to install wget on your system:

#Debian and Ubuntu Systems
sudo apt install wget
 
#Arch Linux-based distros:
sudo pacman -S wget

Using curl to Access a Website in Linux

Let’s run curl on google.com to see what the output looks like.

$ curl google.com

Output:

<HTML><HEAD><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8">
<TITLE>301 Moved</TITLE></HEAD><BODY>
<H1>301 Moved</H1>
The document has moved
<A HREF="http://www.google.com/">here</A>.
</BODY></HTML>

As you can see, the curl displays data from the webpage on the terminal.

Use the wget to Access a Website in Linux

Let’s run wget on some websites to see the output.

$ wget python.org

Output:

--2022-01-19 21:50:34--  https://www.python.org/
Resolving python.org (python.org)... 138.197.63.241
Connecting to python.org (python.org)|138.197.63.241|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 301 Moved Permanently
Location: https://python.org/ [following]
--2022-01-19 21:50:37--  https://python.org/
Connecting to python.org (python.org)|138.197.63.241|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 301 Moved Permanently
Location: https://www.python.org/ [following]
--2022-01-19 21:50:39--  https://www.python.org/
Resolving www.python.org (www.python.org)... 2a04:4e42:2d::223, 151.101.188.223
Connecting to www.python.org (www.python.org)|2a04:4e42:2d::223|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 49799 (49K) [text/html]
Saving to: 'index.html'

index.html                          100%[=================================================================>]  48.63K  9.75KB/s    in 5.0s    

2022-01-19 21:50:46 (9.75 KB/s) - 'index.html' saved [49799/49799]

The wget saves the results to a file by default. In the output, there is also a progress bar.

Difference Between curl and wget in Linux

  • The curl is based on libcurl, a cross-platform library with a well-defined API that anyone may use. This distinction is critical because it produces an entirely different mentality about dealing with things inside.

A library is also slightly more difficult to create than a simple command-line tool.

  • The curl is similar to the standard Unix-cat command in that it transmits more data to stdout and reads more data from stdin in an everything is a pipe fashion.
  • The curl is primarily designed to perform single-shot data transfers. It only transfers the URLs that the user chooses, and it doesn’t have any recursive downloading logic or HTML parser.

the wget in Contrast to the curl Command in Linux

  • The wget's main advantage over curl is its ability to download recursively, or even just everything referred to from a remote resource, whether it’s an HTML page or an FTP directory listing.
  • The wget can be traced back to its precursor on January 9, 1996, whereas curl can only be traced to November 11, 1996.
  • The wget is released under the GNU General Public License version 3.
  • The wget is part of the GNU Project, and all copyrights have been handed over to the Free Software Foundation. The curl project is completely self-contained and self-contained, with no organizational oversight and practically all copyrights owned by Daniel.
  • The wget does not require any additional arguments to download a distant URL to a local file, but curl does.
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