Short answer: on speed, it's a tie — don't pick between curl and wget based on download speed. I downloaded the same 27 MB file three times with each tool on Linux on October 25, 2026, and the median download time was virtually identical: 11.61 seconds for curl, 11.60 seconds for wget. Where they genuinely differ is what they're built for: curl is the Swiss-army tool for talking to servers, while wget is the tool for grabbing whole websites. Pick based on the job, not the stopwatch.
How I Tested
Every download fetched the same file — the Python 3.12.0 source tarball from python.org, exactly 27,195,214 bytes — so the comparison was apples to apples. The machine was an Ubuntu 24.04 VM with 2 CPU cores and no GPU, running curl 8.5.0 and GNU Wget 1.21.4. I alternated the tools run by run (curl, wget, curl, wget…) so neither one got an unfair advantage from a quiet moment on the network, and I verified every download by comparing its SHA-256 checksum against the others.
The Speed Test: A Dead Heat
Here are the six timed downloads, in the order they ran:
| Run | curl | wget |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 14.02 s | 11.91 s |
| 2 | 4.73 s | 11.60 s |
| 3 | 11.61 s | 11.40 s |
| Median | 11.61 s | 11.60 s |
| Mean | 10.12 s | 11.64 s |
Two things stand out. First, the medians differ by one hundredth of a second — that is not a win for either tool, it's noise. Second, curl's fastest run (4.73 seconds) is what pulls its average down; on any other run it was right in line with wget. Network conditions on a shared connection vary more from minute to minute than these two tools differ from each other. Anyone claiming one is "much faster" for a single file download is measuring their network, not the tool.
All six downloads produced identical files — the first 16 characters of every SHA-256 checksum matched (51412956d24a1ef7…), so neither tool corrupted or truncated anything.
The Resume Test: Both Passed
Interrupted downloads are where a download tool earns its keep, so I truncated a copy of the file to exactly half its size (13,597,607 bytes) and resumed it with each tool — curl -C - for curl and wget -c for wget:
| Tool | Resume command | Time to finish | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| curl | curl -C - -o file.tgz URL |
5.98 s | Complete, checksum matched |
| wget | wget -c -O file.tgz URL |
7.04 s | Complete, checksum matched |
Both resumed cleanly and produced byte-identical files. The one-second gap is within the same network noise seen in the speed test. If you regularly download large files over flaky connections, either tool's resume support works — just remember the flag, because neither resumes by default.
Redirects and Headers: Both Fine
Both tools followed an http:// to https:// redirect chain to github.com and landed on a 200 response. Both can also show you a server's response headers before downloading — curl -I URL for curl, wget --spider -S URL for wget. For everyday downloading, neither tool has a practical edge here.
Where They Actually Differ
Speed is a tie, so this is the part that should decide your choice:
| Task | Winner | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Downloading one file | Tie | Medians were 11.61 s vs 11.60 s in my test |
| Resuming a download | Tie | Both resumed a half-downloaded file perfectly |
| Mirroring a whole website | wget | wget has built-in recursive downloading (wget -r), documented in the GNU Wget manual; curl downloads one URL at a time by design |
| Talking to APIs and servers | curl | curl supports many protocols and request types (GET, POST, custom headers, authentication) — see the curl manual; wget is a downloader, not an API client |
| Downloading several files at once | curl, on paper | curl has built-in parallel downloads (curl -Z), while wget needs xargs -P for parallelism |
| Simple "just get this file" use | wget | wget saves to a sensibly named file by default; curl prints to the terminal unless you add -o |
One honest caveat on that parallel-download row: when I actually tested it, curl's built-in parallel mode downloaded three copies of the test file in 24.69 seconds, while three sequential wget downloads took 20.87 seconds. On this connection, parallelism didn't help at all — the shared network link, not the tool, was the bottleneck. Parallel downloads help when you're fetching many small files from different servers, not when one link is already saturated.
Which One Should You Use?
- Use curl if you're working with APIs, testing servers, uploading data, or writing scripts that talk to web services. It's the tool developers reach for, and it's preinstalled on most systems.
- Use wget if you want to download files or mirror websites with the least fuss. Its defaults — sensible filenames, recursive mode, easy resume — are built for that job.
- Use either if you just need to download a file. Seriously: the speed difference in my test was 0.01 seconds on the median. Learn one tool well instead of agonizing over which to install.
If you only learn one, learn curl — its API and debugging features (-v for verbose output, -I for headers, custom request methods) cover jobs wget simply can't do, while wget's core downloading job is a subset curl handles fine.
FAQ
Is curl faster than wget? Not in my test. Across three downloads of the same 27 MB file, the median times were 11.61 seconds (curl) and 11.60 seconds (wget) — effectively identical.
Can wget resume downloads?
Yes. Run wget -c URL and it continues a partially downloaded file instead of starting over. In my test it resumed a half-downloaded file and produced a checksum-identical result.
Can curl download a whole website? Not the way wget can. curl fetches one URL per invocation, while wget's recursive mode follows links and mirrors site structures. For full-site downloads, wget is the right tool.
Do I need to install either tool?
Probably not — both ship by default on most Linux distributions and macOS, and both are available for Windows. Check with curl --version and wget --version.
Conclusion
The curl vs wget debate has a boring but useful answer: for downloading a single file, they are equally fast, equally reliable, and equally able to resume. The real difference is philosophy — curl is a tool for communicating with servers, wget is a tool for downloading from them. Choose the one whose strengths match the job in front of you, and stop worrying about the stopwatch.
How this article was made
On October 25, 2026, I ran the tests described above on an Ubuntu 24.04 VM (2 CPU cores, no GPU) using curl 8.5.0 and GNU Wget 1.21.4. The test file was the Python 3.12.0 source tarball (27,195,214 bytes) from python.org. I timed 6 single-file downloads, 2 resume tests from a half-downloaded file, a redirect test, and a 3-file parallel vs sequential comparison, and verified all outputs with SHA-256 checksums. Feature differences (wget's recursive mode, curl's protocol and request support) were checked against the tools' official documentation: the GNU Wget manual and the curl manual. This article was drafted with AI assistance and every number in it comes from the tests above; no benchmark was invented or borrowed.