Boost Your Downloads: 11 Essential Command‑Line Tools and When to Use Them

Basic Command‑line Downloaders

wget

Pre‑installed on most Linux distributions, provides reliable single‑threaded downloads.

# Basic download
wget https://example.com/file.zip

# Resume broken download
wget -c https://example.com/bigfile.iso

# Background download (continues after terminal closes)
wget -b https://example.com/hugefile.tar.gz

curl

Versatile tool for HTTP/HTTPS, FTP and other protocols; useful for quick file fetches and API testing.

# Download file
curl -O https://example.com/file.zip

# Show progress bar
curl -# -O https://example.com/file.zip

# Resume download
curl -C - -O https://example.com/file.zip

Multi‑Threaded Downloaders

axel

Splits a download into multiple threads for faster throughput.

# 16‑thread download
axel -n 16 https://example.com/file.zip

# Limit bandwidth to 1 MiB/s
axel -s 1024 https://example.com/file.zip

aria2

Feature‑rich downloader supporting HTTP, FTP, BitTorrent and magnet links with extensive parallelism.

# 16 connections, 16 streams
aria2c -x 16 -s 16 https://example.com/file.zip

# Download a torrent file
aria2c file.torrent

# Magnet link download
aria2c "magnet:?xt=urn:btih:..."

# Use a configuration file
aria2c --conf-path=aria2.conf

lftp

Specialized FTP/FTPS client offering parallel transfers and scripting.

# Simple FTP download
lftp ftp://user:[email protected] -e "get file.zip; quit"

# Parallel download of multiple files
lftp -e "pget -n 8 file.zip" ftp://server.com

Specialized Tools

yt‑dlp

Fork of youtube‑dl for downloading videos from YouTube, Bilibili, TikTok and many other sites.

# Download a YouTube video
yt-dlp "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=..."

# Best quality
yt-dlp -f best "https://..."

# Extract audio only
yt-dlp -x --audio-format mp3 "https://..."

# Download a playlist
yt-dlp "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=..."

# Download subtitles
yt-dlp --write-subs --sub-lang en "https://..."

rsync

Efficient file‑{synchronization, incremental download} tool with resume support.

# Sync remote directory
rsync -avz user@server:/remote/path/ ./local/path/

# Resume partial transfer
rsync -avz --partial user@server:/remote/file ./local/

HTTPie

Modern HTTP client with a clean syntax, suitable for quick file downloads and API testing.

# Simple download
http --download https://example.com/file.zip

# Download with progress bar
http --print=HhBb --download https://example.com/file.zip

uGet (CLI mode)

GUI‑oriented downloader that also offers a command‑line interface for scripted usage.

# CLI download
uget-gtk --quiet --category-index=0 "https://example.com/file.zip"

mget

Utility for batch downloading multiple URLs in parallel.

# Download four URLs with 4 threads
mget -n 4 url1 url2 url3 url4

Custom Multi‑Threaded Downloader (C++)

A personal project demonstrates key techniques for building a high‑performance downloader:

Thread‑pool management for configurable concurrency (e.g., 32 threads).

HTTP request optimization (connection reuse, range requests).

Resume‑support via persistent metadata and HTTP Range headers.

Production‑grade CLI design with clear flags and error handling.

Benchmarking shows >10× speed improvement over single‑threaded tools when using 32 concurrent connections.

Practical Recommendations

Newcomers: start with wget for its simplicity and reliability.

Heavy everyday use: aria2 offers the best balance of speed, protocol support, and configurability.

Video downloading: choose yt‑dlp.

Large files: use axel or aria2 for multi‑threaded acceleration.

API testing or occasional downloads: curl or HTTPie provide concise syntax.