curl vs Wget

What both commands do

  • both are command line tools that can download contents from FTP, HTTP and HTTPS

  • both can send HTTP POST requests

  • both support HTTP cookies

  • both are designed to work without user interaction, like from within scripts

  • both are fully open source and free software

  • both projects were started in the 90s

  • both support metalink

curl

  • library. curl is powered by libcurl - a cross-platform library with a stable API that can be used by each and everyone. This difference is major since it creates a completely different attitude on how to do things internally. It is also slightly harder to make a library than a "mere" command line tool. (库支持：curl是由libcurl支持的，它是一个跨平台的库，拥有一个稳定的API，每个人都可以使用它。主要的差异在于内部实现通过完全不同的方式。与“mere”命令行工具相比，创建一个库要稍微困难一些。)

  • pipes. curl works more like the traditional unix cat command, it sends more stuff to stdout, and reads more from stdin in a "everything is a pipe" manner. Wget is more like cp, using the same analogue. （管道：curl的工作模式相当于unix的‘cat’,它输出更多的内容，输入时全部为管道的形式；wget和‘cp’是相同的模式）

  • Single shot. curl is basically made to do single-shot transfers of data. It transfers just the URLs that the user specifies, and does not contain any recursive downloading logic nor any sort of HTML parser.\n (单次发送：curl基本上是用来进行单次传输数据传输的。它只传输用户指定的url，不包含任何递归下载逻辑，也不包含任何类型的HTML解析器。)

  • More protocols. curl supports FTP, FTPS, Gopher, HTTP, HTTPS, SCP, SFTP, TFTP, TELNET, DICT, LDAP, LDAPS, FILE, POP3, IMAP, SMB/CIFS, SMTP, RTMP and RTSP. Wget only supports HTTP, HTTPS and FTP. （更多的协议支持：curl支持：“FTP, FTPS, Gopher, HTTP1.1, HTTPS, SCP, SFTP, TFTP, TELNET, DICT, LDAP, LDAPS, FILE, POP3, IMAP, SMB/CIFS, SMTP, RTMP and RTSP”； wget支持:"HTTP1.0, HTTPS and FTP" ）

  • More portable. curl builds and runs on lots of more platforms than wget. For example: OS/400, TPF and other more "exotic" platforms that aren't straight-forward unix clones.

  • More SSL libraries and SSL support. curl can be built with one out of eleven (11!) different SSL/TLS libraries, and it offers more control and wider support for protocol details.

  • HTTP auth. curl supports more HTTP authentication methods, especially over HTTP proxies: Basic, Digest, NTLM and Negotiate

  • SOCKS. curl supports several SOCKS protocol versions for proxy access

  • Bidirectional. curl offers upload and sending capabilities. Wget only offers plain HTTP POST support. 双向能力:curl提供上传，发送能力，wget只提供简单的port.

  • HTTP multipart/form-data sending, which allows users to do HTTP "upload" and in general emulate browsers and do HTTP automation to a wider extent HTTP多部件/表单数据发送:允许用户执行HTTP“上传”，并在一般情况下模拟浏览器，并在更广泛的范围内进行HTTP自动化。

  • curl supports gzip and deflate Content-Encoding and does automatic decompression (支持gzip和默认的编码格式，自动解压)

  • curl offers and performs decompression of Transfer-Encoded HTTP, wget doesn't

  • curl supports HTTP/2 and it does dual-stack connects using Happy Eyeballs

  • Much more developer activity. While this can be debated, I consider three metrics here: mailing list activity, source code commit frequency and release frequency. Anyone following these two projects can see that the curl project has a lot higher pace in all these areas, and it has been so for 10+ years. Compare on openhub

Wget

  • Wget is command line only. There's no library.

  • Recursive! Wget's major strong side compared to curl is its ability to download recursively,(递归下载) or even just download everything that is referred to from a remote resource, be it a HTML page or a FTP directory listing. （递归：与curl相比，Wget的主要强大之处是它可以递归地下载，甚至可以下载从远程资源中引用的所有内容，无论是HTML页面还是FTP目录。）

  • Older. Wget has traces back to 1995, while curl can be tracked back no earlier than the end of 1996.

  • GPL. Wget is 100% GPL v3. curl is MIT licensed.

  • GNU. Wget is part of the GNU project and all copyrights are assigned to FSF. The curl project is entirely stand-alone and independent with no organization parenting at all with almost all copyrights owned by Daniel.

  • Wget requires no extra options to simply download a remote URL to a local file, while curl requires -o or -O.

  • Wget supports only GnuTLS or OpenSSL for SSL/TLS support

  • Wget supports only Basic auth as the only auth type over HTTP proxy

  • Wget has no SOCKS support

  • Its ability to recover from a prematurely broken transfer and continue downloading has no counterpart in curl. (支持传输中断 & 断点续传 -c)

  • Wget enables more features by default: cookies, redirect-following, time stamping from the remote resource etc. With curl most of those features need to be explicitly enabled. (Wget在默认情况下启用了更多特性:cookie、直接跟踪、来自远程资源的时间戳等，其中大部分特性需要显式地启用。)

  • Wget can be typed in using only the left hand on a qwerty keyboard! (wget 只需要左手的键盘)

  • Additional Stuff

  • Some have argued that I should compare uploading capabilities with wput, but that's a separate tool/project and I don't include that in this comparison.

  • Two other capable tools with similar feature set include aria2 and axel (dead project?) - try them out!

  • For a stricter feature by feature comparison (that also compares other similar tools), see the curl comparison table

Thanks

Any problems, please contact me!