# aria2

Hacker Approved page: https://hackerapproved.com/p/aria2/

7 people recommended aria2 in Hacker News comments, 2 had mixed feelings and none criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026. It was recommended in 3 of 12 months, in 3 threads. It does not meet the Hacker Approved badge rule.

4 of the 7 people who recommend it commented in one thread, “Making big downloads resumable in Firefox”.

**Verdict:** Command-line download tool that handles big downloads, torrents and magnet links, and scripts like curl or wget. Common caveat: it does not fully support retries.

Summary written by Claude from 7 comments.

## Why people recommend it

- Covers most download use cases (2 comments in the sample): "I like using the aria2[0] download utility - I don't think I've downloaded anything bigger than a dozen megabytes through a web browser for the…" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50063888)) "Pretty sure it covers just about every "move this from here to me" use case." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50064611))
- Scriptable like curl or wget (2 comments in the sample): "aria2c feels more like running curl or wget, much more intuitive for scripting with it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46031357)) "you can use curl, wget, aria2 etc to access online content" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48696576))

## What people warn about

- Lacks a TUI for multiple torrents (1 comment in the sample): "I prefer aria2c for one go torrent/magnet links although it lacks a proper TUI for handling more than one torrent" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46032886))
- Does not fully support retries (1 comment in the sample): "it doesn't fully support retries. As in, even if you pass something like" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50069361))

## What people recommend instead

- [GetRight](https://hackerapproved.com/p/getright/): 9 recommend, 1 mixed, 0 criticize

## The badge

A product earns the Hacker Approved badge when at least 10 people recommend it, recommenders outnumber critics at least 2 to 1 (mixed feelings count toward neither side), it was recommended in at least 4 of the 12 months and in at least 5 different threads, and no single thread supplies more than half of the people who recommend it. Health and money products are never badged.

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "aria2", https://hackerapproved.com/p/aria2/ (7 recommend, 2 mixed, 0 criticize; Hacker News comments, November 2025 to October 2026).

Counts updated 2 Nov 2026, with data through October 31, 2026.