shouldiuse.io

VERDICT

Should I use curl?

Command line tool and library for transferring data with URLs - curl.se

Depends. If you are a developer or run infrastructure, curl is free and already installed — just use it. Non-technical buyers get nothing here: no GUI, no vendor, nothing to buy.

Confidence

Medium. Based on 18 public sources; most review results matched unrelated hair-care products, so user-review evidence is sparse.

Ratings

  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Feature depth
  • Support quality
  • Security posture

Pricing

$0

curl / libcurl

ModelNot disclosed
Monthly feesNot disclosed
HardwareNot disclosed
Free tierYes

Best for

  • Developers scripting API calls
  • DevOps and CI/CD pipelines
  • Debugging HTTP endpoints
  • Vendors embedding a transfer library

Not for

  • Non-technical users — there is no GUI
  • Anyone with procurement budget: nothing to buy
  • Teams needing vendor support contracts or SLAs
  • No-code teams building integrations

Gotchas - check before you buy

medium

curl will not accept vulnerability reports during July 2026 — plan disclosures accordingly

medium

Your vendors ship curl too: QNAP, Cisco, and BigFix advisories mean patching their products, not just yours

medium

CVE-2023-38545 heap overflow affected countless bundled installs; keep versions current

low

Free means nobody is contractually accountable if it breaks

Pros and cons

Pros

  • Free and open source with zero licensing cost
  • Likely already preinstalled on your machines
  • De facto standard in API documentation
  • Actively maintained since 1998
  • Run at scale by Netflix and Spotify

Cons

  • Terminal-only; unforgiving for non-developers
  • Support is community mailing lists; no vendor SLA
  • Regular CVEs require someone to track and patch
  • Funded by sponsors and grants, not paying customers

Sources & method

Analyzed 9/26/2026 - 10 sources - Mature open-source project with a formal disclosure policy; steady CVE stream including a 2023 heap overflow and a use-after-free.

official x4security x3news x3
  • CVE-2023-38545, Heap buffer overflow in, widely tracked by enterprises
  • CVE-2023-27534, SFTP path traversal issue, patched via vendor advisories
  • CVE-2026-10536, Use-after-free vulnerability in curl
  • Six CVEs including the oldest issue ever reported, AISLE research found long-lived bugs in curl's codebase

Key stats

  • Value for money: 5/5

    Rating

  • $0

    Starting price

  • 10

    Sources

  • Analyzed

  • Value for money: 5/5. Free and open source; $0 total cost
  • Ease of use: 2/5. Terminal-only; hostile to non-developers
  • Feature depth: 5/5. Decades of protocol support; embeds everywhere
  • Support quality: 2/5. Mailing lists only; no vendor SLA
  • Security posture: 3/5. Mature disclosure policy; steady CVE stream
  • $0 Price Free and open source
  • 1998 First release Maintained by Daniel Stenberg
  • 20B+ Installations Per the project's own tally
  • EU STF grant Funding Backed as critical open source, 2025

Pricing

curl / libcurl

$0

  • Command-line tool
  • libcurl for embedding
  • Community mailing-list support

Security

Mature open-source project with a formal disclosure policy; steady CVE stream including a 2023 heap overflow and a use-after-free.

  • CVE-2023-38545Heap buffer overflow in, widely tracked by enterprises⁶
  • CVE-2023-27534SFTP path traversal issue, patched via vendor advisories
  • CVE-2026-10536Use-after-free vulnerability in curl⁷
  • Six CVEs including the oldest issue ever reportedAISLE research found long-lived bugs in curl's codebase

What users say

Developer chatter treats curl as default infrastructure everyone already has, with its security cadence the main recurring complaint.

“Let's be honest here. Curl to 98% of people is http/1 ...”
Hacker News

Alternatives

Compare curl with each alternative.

  • HTTPie

    Friendlier CLI HTTP client with readable output

  • Wget

    Preinstalled, download-focused command-line alternative

    curl vs Wget

  • ReqBin

    Run curl commands in a browser, no install

    curl vs ReqBin

  • Python requests

    Cleaner option when scripting inside Python code

Companies that use it

  • Netflix
  • Spotify
Full analysis

Based on 18 public sources; most review results matched unrelated hair-care products, so user-review evidence is sparse.

Free open-source CLI plumbing already on your machines: developers use it, everyone else has no reason to touch it.

Methodology

Based on 18 public sources; most review results matched unrelated hair-care products, so user-review evidence is sparse.

Sources

  1. curl — official sitecurl.se
    official
  2. curl/curl on GitHubgithub.com
    official
  3. cURL — Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org
    official
  4. Users of curl — Everything curleverything.curl.dev
    official
  5. curl security pagecurl.se
    security
  6. Curl vulnerability CVE-2023-38545 — Microsoft Q&Alearn.microsoft.com
    security
  7. CVE-2026-10536 — SentinelOnesentinelone.com
    security
  8. Curl will not accept vulnerability reports during July 2026news.ycombinator.com
    news
  9. EU-STF for funding critical Open Sourcedaniel.haxx.se
    news
  10. Daniel Stenberg: An Open Source journeyopensource.org
    news

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