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Difference Between wget VS curl

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wget and curl are the commands that are used to HTTP requests without any GUI or software, rather we use the Terminal in Linux that provides the respective output or message. The commands are very useful for web crawling, web scraping, testing RESTful APIs, etc.

Curl

Curl is a free and open-source command-line utility tool that allows the users as well as the developers to transfer data without any UI interaction. It is commonly used in routers, mobiles, etc. 

Protocols Supported: HTTP/HTTPS, FTP, SFTP, SCP, IMAP, LDAP/LDAPS, SMB/SMBS, TELNET, POP3, GOPHER, etc.

Wget

wget or GNU wget is another open-source free command-line tool for transferring files using HTTP/HTTPS, FTP, and FTPS.

Features: Recursive downloads, Bandwidth control, Resumes aborted transfers, Background downloads, Recursive mirror files, and directories, etc.

Install wget and curl

To install wget, enter the following command:

sudo apt-get install wget

 

To install curl, enter the following command:

sudo apt-get install curl

 

Example: In the following example, we will HTTP/HTTPS request through curl and wget and download a website page.

Using the curl command, save a webpage.

curl https://geeksforgeeks.org -o geeks.html

Output: The file is downloaded as geeks.html

 

Using the wget command, save a webpage. 

wget https://practice.geeksforgeeks.org/jobs

Output

 

We have the jobs file from wget and geeks.html using the curl command.

Example 2:  In the following example, we will learn FTP protocol requests through curl and wget and download files.

To download files from a domain name like the GeeksforGeeks logo from wget, use the following command.

wget https://media.geeksforgeeks.org/wp-content/cdn-uploads/20210420155809/gfg-new-logo.png

The output is as follows:- 

 

Using the curl command, we can specify the name, for example, logo, and download as follows:

curl https://media.geeksforgeeks.org/wp-content/cdn-uploads/20210420155809/gfg-new-logo.png -o logo.png

The output is as follows:

 

curl also supports uploading files to the web. We need to add the flag -T to specify uploading. We use the following command to upload files to any URL.

curl -T “geeks_logo.png” ftp://www.geeksforgeeks.org/upload/to/url/

Example 3: Recursive downloading

wget utility tool supports recursive downloading and we add the flag –recursive for that.

wget –recursive https://practice.geeksforgeeks.org/jobs

This command downloads all the related resources to a folder named at the web page URL. The output is as follows:

Terminal(Download in progress)

 

Files and Folders downloaded

 

The files path added to robots.txt are ignored. To turn this feature off, add the -e flag as follows:

wget -e robots=off https://practice.geeksforgeeks.org/jobs

The documents downloaded are in form of breadth-first-search. But it can be overridden by mentioning the depth by -l flag and setting the depth. The default maximum depth is 5.

wget ‐l=1 ‐‐recursive ‐‐no-parent https://practice.geeksforgeeks.org/jobs

 

Table of Difference between wget and curl

wget curl
wget is a simple transfer command-line utility. curl has much more functionality. The libcurl library can be used as a GUI library.
Limited support for different protocols. Has more support to protocols. It supports bidirectional HTTP.
Recursive download supported. Other features are Bandwidth control, Resumes aborted transfers, Background downloads, Recursive mirror files, and directories, etc. The recursive download is not supported.
Wget supported protocols: HTTP, HTTPS, and FTP. Curl-supported protocols: DICT, FILE, FTP, FTPS, Gopher, HTTP, HTTPS, IMAP, IMAPS, LDAP, LDAPS, POP3, POP3S, RTMP, RTSP, SCP, SFTP, SMB, SMBS, SMTP, SMTPS, Telnet and TFT.
wget is more focused and available on Linux operating systems. Curl is available on multiple platforms with many web utilities.

Last Updated : 03 Jun, 2022
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