curl / libcurl overview

libcurl - the multiprotocol file transfer library

libcurl is a free and easy-to-use client-side URL transfer library, supporting DICT, FILE, FTP, FTPS, GOPHER, GOPHERS, HTTP, HTTPS, IMAP, IMAPS, LDAP, LDAPS, MQTT, POP3, POP3S, RTMP, RTMPS, RTSP, SCP, SFTP, SMB, SMBS, SMTP, SMTPS, TELNET and TFTP. libcurl supports SSL certificates, HTTP POST, HTTP PUT, FTP uploading, HTTP form based upload, proxies, HTTP/2, HTTP/3, cookies, user+password authentication (Basic, Digest, NTLM, Negotiate, Kerberos), file transfer resume, http proxy tunneling and more!

libcurl is highly portable, it builds and works identically on numerous platforms, including Solaris, NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Darwin, HPUX, IRIX, AIX, Tru64, Linux, UnixWare, HURD, Windows, Amiga, OS/2, BeOs, Mac OS X, Ultrix, QNX, OpenVMS, RISC OS, Novell NetWare, DOS and more...

libcurl is free, thread-safe, IPv6 compatible, feature rich, well supported, fast, thoroughly documented and is already used by many known, big and successful companies.

Download

Go to the regular curl download page and get the latest curl package, or one of the specific libcurl packages listed.

API

You use libcurl with the provided C API. The curl team works hard to keep the API and ABI stable. If you prefer using libcurl from your other favorite language, chances are there's already a binding written for it.

Howto

Check out our using libcurl page for general hints and advice and man pages for every function and option. Also, check out the libcurl section of everything curl.

libcurl is probably the most portable, most powerful and most often used network transfer library on this planet.