Hacker Bits, April 2016
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Wget's major strong side<br />
compared to curl is its ability to<br />
download recursively...<br />
• HTTP multipart/form-data<br />
sending, which allows users<br />
to do HTTP "upload" and in<br />
general emulate browsers<br />
and do HTTP automation to<br />
a wider extent<br />
• curl supports gzip and inflate<br />
Content-Encoding and<br />
does automatic decompression<br />
• curl offers and performs decompression<br />
of Transfer-Encoded<br />
HTTP, wget doesn't<br />
• curl supports HTTP/2 and<br />
it does dual-stack connects<br />
using Happy Eyeballs<br />
• Much more developer activity.<br />
While this can be debated,<br />
I consider three metrics<br />
here: mailing list activity,<br />
source code commit frequency<br />
and release frequency.<br />
Anyone following these<br />
two projects can see that the<br />
curl project has a lot higher<br />
pace in all these areas, and<br />
it has been so for 10+ years.<br />
Compare on openhub.<br />
Wget<br />
• Wget is command line only.<br />
There's no library.<br />
• Recursive! Wget's major<br />
strong side compared to<br />
curl is its ability to download<br />
recursively, or even just<br />
download everything that is<br />
referred to from a remote<br />
resource, be it a HTML page<br />
or a FTP directory listing.<br />
• Older. Wget has traces back<br />
to 1995, while curl can be<br />
tracked back no earlier than<br />
the end of 1996.<br />
• GPL. Wget is 100% GPL v3.<br />
curl is MIT licensed.<br />
• GNU. Wget is part of the GNU<br />
project and all copyrights<br />
are assigned to FSF. The<br />
curl project is entirely standalone<br />
and independent with<br />
no organization parenting at<br />
all with almost all copyrights<br />
owned by Daniel.<br />
• Wget requires no extra<br />
options to simply download<br />
a remote URL to a local file,<br />
while curl requires -o or -O.<br />
• Wget supports only GnuT-<br />
LS or OpenSSL for SSL/TLS<br />
support<br />
• Wget supports only Basic<br />
auth as the only auth type<br />
over HTTP proxy<br />
• Wget has no SOCKS support<br />
• Its ability to recover from a<br />
prematurely broken transfer<br />
and continue downloading<br />
has no counterpart in curl.<br />
• Wget enables more features<br />
by default: cookies,<br />
redirect-following, time<br />
stamping from the remote<br />
resource etc. With curl most<br />
of those features need to<br />
be explicitly enabled.<br />
• Wget can be typed in using<br />
only the left hand on a qwerty<br />
keyboard!<br />
Additional stuff<br />
Some have argued that I should<br />
compare uploading capabilities<br />
with wput, but that's a separate<br />
tool/project and I don't include<br />
that in this comparison.<br />
Two other capable tools<br />
with similar feature set include<br />
aria2 and axel (dead project?) -<br />
try them out!<br />
For a stricter feature by<br />
feature comparison (that also<br />
compares other similar tools),<br />
see the curl comparison table.<br />
Thanks<br />
Feedback and improvements<br />
by: Micah Cowan and Olemis<br />
Lang. •<br />
Reprinted with permission of the original author. First appeared at daniel.haxx.se.<br />
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