# curl

100 Hacker News commenters recommended curl and 26 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** A mature, well-tested command-line tool for HTTP and many other protocols that composes well in scripts and with agents; critics find it has too many options.

## Why people recommend it

- Well-engineered, rigorously tested and reliable (7 comments): "curl is certainly a much more difficult problem to solve well, and does so without 30 million issues" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49783409)) "curl may just happen to be a well-hardened tool that doesn't have too many security vulnerabilities" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48096995)) "Curl and SQLite are my favourite examples of properly engineered, rigourously tested _anything_." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48092258))
- Composable in scripts with jq (7 comments): "a simple script (curl calling steam API and sending a notification if the price is set) + cron handle the job perfectly" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47869515)) "providing a few curl + jq oneliners to interact with a REST API works great in my experience" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47714728)) "The ones that survive decades (Make, grep, curl) do one thing and compose well" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47267519))
- Works well with AI agents (3 comments): "Complex agent-system integration problems are usually better solved with just AI agent + curl + SKILL.md." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49786023)) "curl is an excellent, very popular command on which all major coding models are well trained on." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49091546)) "Agents love standing on the shoulders of good crystalized cognition (grep, curl etc)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49849726))
- Supports many protocols and features (4 comments): "I find myself using curl telnet://server:port too often these days because telnet and nc don’t get installed." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46969368)) "it's an enormously complex and capable tool. Support for tons of protocols, certs, and much more." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48278693)) "curl can do very detailed timing [1] for what it's worth and it can also do this using a proxy" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48562690))

## What people warn about

- Vulnerability report pause criticized (4 comments): "With more advance notice, someone could have found resources to fork curl with different vulnerability management expectations" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48542231)) "No, that is the point, they are not going to accept your vuln report. They are taking a holiday." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48537967)) "Why would you imagine they have any clue about the area of effect if they ignore the report?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48538636))
- Too many options, still limited (2 comments): "curl is more limited than the programs I use to generate HTTP, it's slower" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49348253)) "There are some things curl cannot do, even though it has too many options" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48570190))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [wget](https://hackerapproved.com/p/wget.md): 19 recommend
- [HTTPie](https://hackerapproved.com/p/httpie.md): 7 recommend
- [curl-impersonate](https://hackerapproved.com/p/curl-impersonate.md): 5 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "curl", https://hackerapproved.com/p/curl/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).