curl -L: follow redirects (301, 302) with curl

curl -L URL follows HTTP redirects: when the server answers with a 3xx status and a Location header, curl requests the new URL and repeats until it gets a final response. Without -L, curl prints the body of the redirect response (often empty) and stops, which is why downloads from GitHub releases, short links and http:// to https:// upgrades seem to return nothing. curl follows at most 50 redirects by default; change it with --max-redirs N.

Example

A Node.js server on 127.0.0.1 redirects /old to /new with a 301, and /loop to itself:

cat > server.js <<'EOF'
const s = require("http").createServer((req, res) => {
  if (req.url === "/old") { res.writeHead(301, { Location: "/new" }); return res.end(); }
  if (req.url === "/loop") { res.writeHead(302, { Location: "/loop" }); return res.end(); }
  res.writeHead(200, { "Content-Type": "text/plain" });
  res.end(`final page, method ${req.method}\n`);
});
s.listen(5142, "127.0.0.1");
setTimeout(() => process.exit(0), 15000);
EOF
node server.js &
sleep 1
U=http://127.0.0.1:5142
echo "without -L:"; curl -s -w 'status %{http_code}, location %{redirect_url}\n' "$U/old"
echo "with -L:"; curl -sL "$U/old"
curl -sL -o /dev/null -w '%{url_effective} after %{num_redirects} redirect(s)\n' "$U/old"
echo "POST:"; curl -sL -d x=1 "$U/old"
curl -sL --post301 -d x=1 "$U/old"
curl -sSL --max-redirs 3 "$U/loop"; echo "exit $?"

without -L:
status 301, location http://127.0.0.1:5142/new
with -L:
final page, method GET
http://127.0.0.1:5142/new after 1 redirect(s)
POST:
final page, method GET
final page, method POST
curl: (47) Maximum (3) redirects followed
exit 47

Without -L curl reports the 301 and the Location it did not follow. With -L it reaches /new. A POST became a GET after the 301 unless --post301 was given. The loop stopped after three redirects with exit code 47.

Options

Which status codes

Errors

• curl: (47) Maximum (N) redirects followed: a redirect loop or a very long chain. Look at it with curl -sIL URL | grep -i '^location'; loops often come from an HTTP to HTTPS rule combined with a proxy that forwards plain HTTP.
• Empty output and exit 0 without -L: the response was a redirect with no body. Add -L or check the status with -w '%{http_code}'.
• Redirects to another scheme are limited: curl follows HTTP and HTTPS by default and refuses to switch to protocols such as file://.

Platform notes

The same flags work on Linux, macOS and with curl.exe on Windows 10 and later. In Windows PowerShell 5.1 curl is an alias of Invoke-WebRequest, which follows redirects on its own and takes different parameters; type curl.exe.

FAQ