We get lots of questions regarding different aspects of what curl do, and if we know of other products/tools that would do it better. If you have other tools we should add here or if there's a factual error present, get in touch!

Tools To Use Instead of curl

Name	Description
wget	wget downloads a site recursively, using FTP or HTTP
Elza	Tools for HTTP automation and building custom HTTP UserAgents.
Grinder	a simple, pure Java load-testing framework
Web Capacity Analysis Tool (WCAT)	Part of Windows 2000 Resource Kit Runs simulated workloads against your web server, using a standard set of web-based test files from a distributed collection of client PC's. [Documentation is contained in a file called IISTools.chm after installation]
Web Application Stress Tool	(WAST used to be called homer) Realistically simulates multiple browsers requesting pages from a Web site. You can use this tool to gather performance and stability information about your Web application. More info.
Netwox	network testing toolbox - contains over 150 tools
netcat GNU netcat	Netcat is a featured networking utility which reads and writes data across network connections, using the TCP/IP protocol.
OpenSTA	OpenSTA is a distributed software testing architecture which can perform scripted HTTP and HTTPS heavy load tests with performance measurements from Win32 platforms.

Tools That Help You use curl

Name	Description
LiveHTTPHeaders	An extremely useful tool that allows you to track ALL incoming and outgoin HTTP headers when you're using Mozilla, Firefox or Netscape.
Wireshark	Network analyzer deluxe. When "curl --trace" and LiveHTTPHeaders just ain't enough.
tcpdump	The original network analyzer. Powerful and command-line driven.
ssldump	an SSLv3/TLS network protocol analyzer
ieHTTPHeaders	An "explorer bar" for Internet Explorer that will show you the HTTP Headers IE are sending and receiving. Similar to LiveHTTPHeaders but for Internet Explorer.
HTTPLook	An "HTTP sniffer" for Windows 95/98/Me/NT4(SP3)/2000/XP

Thanks to Kevin P Roth for gathering the initial info

Page updated June 22, 2008.
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