The cURL Guide on Downloading Files

In this guide, you will see:

• The basic cURL download file syntax
• How to handle more complex scenarios when downloading files with cURL
• How to download multiple files at once
• Some best practices for using cURL effectively
• A quick comparison between cURL and Wget

Let’s dive in!

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Basic cURL Download File Syntax

Below is the most basic cURL download file syntax:

curl -O <file_url>

💡 Important: On Windows, curl is an alias for Invoke-WebRequest in Windows PowerShell. To avoid the conflict, replace curl with curl.exe.

The -O and --remote-name flags tell cURL to save the downloaded file with its original name:

curl --remote-name <file_url>

For example, consider the following download file cURL command:

curl -O "https://i.imgur.com/CSRiAeN.jpg"

This will produce an output with a download progress bar as below:

% Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100 35354  100 35354    0     0   155k      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--  158k

When the progress bar reaches 100%, a file named CSRiAeN.jpg will appear in the folder where you ran the cURL command:

For more information on cURL and its options, read our cURL guide.

Using cURL to Download a File: Advanced Options

Let's learn some additional options.

Change Downloaded File Name

By default, the -O option saves the dowloaded file under its original name. If the remote file in the URL does not include a name, cURL creates a file with no extension called curl_response:

cURL will also print a warning to inform you of that behavior:

Warning: No remote file name, uses "curl_response"

To specify a custom name for the downloaded file, use the -o (or --output) flag:

curl "https://i.imgur.com/CSRiAeN.jpg" -o "logo.jpg"

cURL will perform a GET request to the specified file URL and save the downloaded content under the name specified after -o. This time, the output file will be a logo.jpg file:

Follow Redirects

Some URLs do not directly point to the desired file and require automatic redirects to reach the final destination.

To instruct cURL to follow redirects, use the -L option:

curl -O -L "<file_url>"

Otherwise, cURL will output the redirection response headers and not follow the new location provided in the Location header.

Authenticate to the Server

Some servers restrict access and require user authentication. To perform basic HTTP or FTP authentication, use the -u (or --user) option and specify a username and password in the following format:

<username>:<password>

The format makes it impossible to include a colon in the username. However, the password can contain a colon.

The <password> string is optional. If you only specify the username, cURL will prompt you to enter the password.

Here is the syntax for downloading a file with cURL using server authentication:

curl -O -u <username>:<password> <file_url>

For example, you can download a file from a URL with authentication using this command:

curl -O -u "myUser:myPassword" "https://example.com/secret.txt"

Impose Bandwidth Restrictions

To avoid using the full available bandwidth, use the --limit-rate option followed by the maximum download speed you want to set:

curl -O --limit-rate 5k "https://i.imgur.com/CSRiAeN.jpg"

The output will be similar to this:

  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100 35354  100 35354    0     0   5166      0  0:00:06  0:00:06 --:--:--  5198

The --limit-rate option helps control bandwidth usage to avoid overloading the network, comply with bandwidth restrictions, or simulate slower network conditions for testing purposes.

Download Through a Proxy Server

To maintain privacy or avoid anti-bot measures like rate limiting, mask your IP and route your request through a proxy using the -x (or --proxy) option:

curl -x <proxy_url> -O <file_url>

<proxy_url> must be specified in the following format:

[protocol://]host[:port]

The proxy URL will vary depending on whether you are using an HTTP, HTTPS, or SOCKS proxy. For more detailed instructions, refer to our cURL proxy integration guide.

For example, if you are using an HTTP proxy, the command would become:

curl -x "http://proxy.example.com:8080" -O "https://i.imgur.com/CSRiAeN.jpg"

Perform Background Downloads

To disable the progress bar and error messages in the output, enable the “quiet” mode using the -s (or --silent) option:

curl -O -s "https://i.imgur.com/CSRiAeN.jpg"

If the download is successful, the file will appear in the current directory without feedback in the terminal.

Print Verbose Detail Information

In case of an error or to better understand what cURL is doing behind the scenes, use the verbose mode by appending the -v (or --verbose) option:

curl -O -v "https://i.imgur.com/CSRiAeN.jpg"

This will turn on additional output with detailed information:

* IPv6: (none)
* IPv4: 146.75.52.193
*   Trying 146.75.52.193:443...
* schannel: disabled automatic use of client certificate
* ALPN: curl offers http/1.1
* ALPN: server accepted http/1.1
* Connected to i.imgur.com (146.75.52.193) port 443
* using HTTP/1.x
> GET /CSRiAeN.jpg HTTP/1.1
> Host: i.imgur.com
> User-Agent: curl/8.10.1
> Accept: */*
>
* Request completely sent off
* schannel: failed to decrypt data, need more data
< HTTP/1.1 200 OK
< Connection: keep-alive
< Content-Length: 35354
< Content-Type: image/jpeg
< Last-Modified: Wed, 08 Jan 2025 08:02:49 GMT
< ETag: "117b93e0521ba1313429bad28b3befc8"
< x-amz-server-side-encryption: AES256
< X-Amz-Cf-Pop: IAD89-P1
< X-Amz-Cf-Id: wTQ20stgw0Ffl1BRmhRhFqpCXY_2hnBLbPXn9D8LgPwdjL96xarRVQ==
< cache-control: public, max-age=31536000
< Accept-Ranges: bytes
< Age: 2903
< Date: Wed, 08 Jan 2025 08:51:12 GMT
< X-Served-By: cache-iad-kiad7000028-IAD, cache-lin1730072-LIN
< X-Cache: Miss from cloudfront, HIT, HIT
< X-Cache-Hits: 1, 0
< X-Timer: S1736326272.410959,VS0,VE1
< Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=300
< Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET, OPTIONS
< Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
< Server: cat factory 1.0
< X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
<
{ [1371 bytes data]
100 35354  100 35354    0     0   212k      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--  214k
* Connection #0 to host i.imgur.com left intact.

Set a Simplified Progress Bar

You can enable a simpler progress bar with -# (or --progress-bar) option:

curl -O -# "https://i.imgur.com/CSRiAeN.jpg"

This will display a progress bar using the # character, which will incrementally fill as the file downloads:

########################################################### 100.0%

How to Download Multiple Files with cURL

Range File Download

You can download multiple files with the same remote URL by specifying them using braces {}:

curl -O "https://example.com/images/{1.jpg,2.jpg,3.jpg}"

This will download the three specified files:

1.jpg
2.jpg
3.jpg

In this particular case, you can also use the common regexp [] syntax:

curl -O "https://example.com/files/file[1-3].jpg"

Note:
All custom options (such as -s for silent mode or --limit-rate for bandwidth restrictions) will be applied to all the files being downloaded.

Multiple File Download

To download files from different URLs, you need to specify the -O option multiple times:

curl -O "https://i.imgur.com/CSRiAeN.jpg" -O "https://brightdata.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/upload_blog_20201220_153903.svg"

The output will contain a download bar per given URL:

  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100 35354  100 35354    0     0   271k      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--  276k
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100 22467    0 22467    0     0  34657      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 34724

Similarly, you can use multiple -o options to define custom names for files:

curl "https://i.imgur.com/CSRiAeN.jpg" -o "logo.jpg" "https://brightdata.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/upload_blog_20201220_153903.svg" -o "blog_post.svg"

You can also mix -O and -o options:

curl "https://i.imgur.com/CSRiAeN.jpg" -o "logo.jpg" -O "https://brightdata.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/upload_blog_20201220_153903.svg"

Note:
Other options like -v, -s or --limit-rate apply to all URLs, so they must be specified once.

Best Practices When Downloading Files with cURL

Below is a list of some of the most important cURL file download best practices:

• Use curl.exe instead of curl on Windows to avoid the conflict with the Invoke-WebRequest cmdlet.
• Ignore HTTPS and SSL/TLS errors with the -k (or --insecure) option.
• Specify the right HTTP methods: Use the -X option to specify GET, POST, or PUT.
• Enclose URLs in quotes and escape special characters with \ to avoid issues with spaces, ampersands, etc.
• Specify a proxy to protect your identity: Use the -x (or --proxy) option .
• Save and reuse cookies across different requests: Use the -c and -b options respectively.
• Limit download speed for better control: Use the --limit-rate option.
• Add verbose output for debugging: Use the -v option.
• Check for error responses: Always check the HTTP response codes using the -w option.

cURL vs Wget for Downloading Files

• cURL has more granular control over data transfer, supports custom headers, authentication, and more protocols.
• Wget is simpler and better suited for bulk downloads, recursion, and handling interrupted transfers.

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