CURLOPT_MAX_RECV_SPEED_LARGE - rate limit data download speed

Added in curl 7.15.5

0, disabled

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.

int main(void) { CURL *curl = curl_easy_init(); if(curl) { CURLcode ret; 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); ret = curl_easy_perform(curl); } }

CURLOPT_MAX_RECV_SPEED_LARGE - rate limit data download speed

This functionality affects all supported protocols

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).

CURLOPT_LOW_SPEED_LIMIT(3), CURLOPT_MAX_SEND_SPEED_LARGE(3), CURLOPT_TIMEOUT(3) libcurl 2025-06-16 CURLOPT_MAX_RECV_SPEED_LARGE(3)

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