CURLOPT_TIMEOUT_MS - maximum time the transfer is allowed to complete

Added in curl 7.16.2

0 (zero) which means it never times out during transfer.

Pass a long as parameter containing timeout - the maximum time in milliseconds that you allow the libcurl transfer operation to take. See CURLOPT_TIMEOUT(3) for details.

int main(void) { CURL *curl = curl_easy_init(); if(curl) { curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_URL, "https://example.com"); /* complete within 20000 milliseconds */ curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT_MS, 20000L); curl_easy_perform(curl); } }

CURLOPT_TIMEOUT_MS - maximum time the transfer is allowed to complete

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_CONNECTTIMEOUT(3), CURLOPT_LOW_SPEED_LIMIT(3), CURLOPT_TCP_KEEPALIVE(3), CURLOPT_TIMEOUT(3) libcurl 2025-06-16 CURLOPT_TIMEOUT_MS(3)

#include <curl/curl.h> CURLcode curl_easy_setopt(CURL *handle, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT_MS, long timeout);