Extracting HTTP Status Codes:

How to output HTTP status code using cURL

Summary

This article explains two reliable command-line methods to make curl output only the numerical HTTP status code. Each curl option and shell utility is explained in detail, including dependencies and references.

Published:

2026-01-08

Updated:

2026-01-09

Reading time:

02:56

Author:

Jonas Jared Jacek

Tags:

curl, scripting, http

License:

CC BY-SA 4.0

Permalink:

Output HTTP status code only using cURL

Introduction #

When you use curl, a free and open source command-line tool for transferring data using Uniform Resource Locators (URLs), you often need to know whether a request succeeded.

One common requirement is to retrieve only the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) status code as a numeric value, without the full HTTP headers or response bodies.

This article explains two command-line approaches to make curl output only the numerical HTTP status code. Each option and supporting command is explained in detail so that you understand exactly how the bare HTTP status code output is produced.

Option 1 relies entirely on `curl` built-in features. It is more robust, easier to read, and preferred for scripts and automation.

Option 1 #

This approach uses curl built-in functionality to print the HTTP status code directly, without relying on external text processing tools.

curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" http://www.example.org/

Option 1 - Command breakdown #

• -s
  The -s option enables silent mode.
  Silent mode disables the progress meter and suppresses error messages. This ensures that only the desired output is written to standard output.
• -o /dev/null
  The -o option specifies an output file for the response body.
  By setting the output file to /dev/null, the response body is discarded. This prevents any response content from appearing in the output.
• -w "%{http_code}"
  The -w option tells curl to output specific variables after a request completes.
  The format string %{http_code} instructs curl to print only the HTTP response status code as a numeric value. No additional text or line breaks are added unless explicitly specified.

This method produces output such as:

200

That is exactly the bare result of a HTTP status code, we are looking for.

Option 2 #

This approach depends on additional command-line utilities such as head and cut. It parses the HTTP status line manually and is sensitive to changes in output format.

This approach relies on requesting only the HTTP response headers using curl -I and extracting the status code from the first line of the response using shell utilities.

curl -I http://www.example.org 2>/dev/null | head -n 1 | cut -d$' ' -f2

Option 2 - Command breakdown #

• curl -I
  The -I option tells curl to fetch the HTTP headers only.
  Internally, this makes curl send an HTTP HEAD request instead of an HTTP GET request. A HEAD request retrieves the response headers without downloading the response body. The first line of the response headers is the HTTP status line, which contains the protocol version, status code, and status text.
  Example of a typical status line:

  HTTP/1.1 200 OK
  

• 2>/dev/null
  The 2>/dev/null part is shell redirection.
  Standard error, abbreviated as stderr, is file descriptor 2. curl writes progress information and certain warnings to stderr. Redirecting stderr to /dev/null discards this output so that it does not interfere with further processing in the pipeline.
• pipe operator |
  The pipe operator passes the standard output of one command as the input to the next command.
  In this case, the HTTP headers produced by curl are passed sequentially to head and then to cut.
• head -n 1
  The head command outputs the first lines of its input.
  The -n 1 option tells head to output only the first line. This line contains the HTTP status line, which includes the numerical status code.
• cut -d$' '
  The cut command extracts specific fields from a line of text.
  The -d$' ' option sets the field delimiter to a single space character. The $' ' syntax ensures that the delimiter is interpreted correctly as a space.
• -f2
  The -f2 option selects the second field.
  In an HTTP status line, the second field is the numerical HTTP status code. For example, in HTTP/1.1 200 OK, the value 200 is returned.

This pipeline produces output such as:

200

That is also exactly the bare result of a HTTP status code, we are looking for.

Further readings #

Sources and recommended, further resources on the topic:

• Curl: Command line tool and library for transferring data with URLs
• cURL manual: Man page
• cURL manual: -I/--head fetch the headers only option.
• cURL manual: -s/--silent option
• cURL manual: -o/--output option
• cURL manual: -w/--write-out option
• cURL cheat sheet
• List of HTTP status codes

Author

Jonas Jared Jacek (J15k)

Jonas works as project manager, web designer, and web developer since 2001. On top of that, he is a Linux system administrator with a broad interest in things related to programming, architecture, and design. See: https://www.j15k.com/

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