When to use curl and when to use wget

DevOps Pre-Requisites Course
#1

Hi KK Team,

I have some confusion on the commands being used while downloading the packages, some times i see we use curl and some times wget.

My question is always can i use the curl command as this is more powerful command while downloading the packages.

Best Regards
sunil kirangi

#2

Hello @SunilKirangi,
The main differences are:

  • wget 's major strong side compared to curl is its ability to download recursively.
  • wget is command line only. There’s no lib or anything, but curl 's features are powered by libcurl.
  • curl supports FTP , FTPS , HTTP , HTTPS , SCP , SFTP , TFTP , TELNET , DICT , LDAP , LDAPS , FILE , POP3 , IMAP , SMTP , RTMP and RTSP . wget supports HTTP , HTTPS and FTP .
  • curl builds and runs on more platforms than wget .
  • wget is released under a free software copyleft license (the GNU GPL). curl is released under a free software permissive license (a MIT derivate).
  • curl offers upload and sending capabilities. wget only offers plain HTTP POST support.
#3

Thank you for your explanation and this really helps to understand the difference between these two commands

Br
Sunil Kirangi