CURLOPT_MAX_RECV_SPEED_LARGE(3)

CURLOPT_MAX_RECV_SPEED_LARGE3

Rate limit data download speed

Usage

#include <curl/curl.h>
CURLcode curl_easy_setopt(CURL *handle, CURLOPT_MAX_RECV_SPEED_LARGE,
                          curl_off_t maxspeed);

Overview

Pass a curl_off_t as parameter. If a download exceeds this maxspeed (counted in bytes per second) the transfer pauses to keep the average speed less than or equal to the parameter value. Defaults to unlimited speed.

This is not an exact science. libcurl attempts to keep the average speed below the given threshold over a period time.

If you set maxspeed to a value lower than CURLOPT_BUFFERSIZE(3), libcurl might download faster than the set limit initially.

This option does not affect transfer speeds done with file:// URLs.

Default

0, disabled

Protocols

This functionality affects all supported protocols

Examples

int main(void)
{
  CURL *curl = curl_easy_init();
  if(curl) {
    CURLcode result;
    curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_URL, "https://example.com/");
    /* cap the download speed to 31415 bytes/sec */
    curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_MAX_RECV_SPEED_LARGE, (curl_off_t)31415);
    result = curl_easy_perform(curl);
  }
}

Return value

curl_easy_setopt(3) returns a CURLcode indicating success or error.

CURLE_OK (0) means everything was OK, non-zero means an error occurred, see libcurl-errors(3).

Releases

7 releases since Debian 8 (Jessie); the text changed 6 times.

  1. 8
  2. 9
  3. 10
  4. 11
  5. 12
  6. 13
  7. Arch

Availability

Added in curl 7.15.5

From curl 8.23.0-1 in Arch Linux 2026-11-01. Parsed by carta from the page's man source.