---
c: Copyright (C) Daniel Stenberg, <daniel@haxx.se>, et al.
SPDX-License-Identifier: curl
Title: CURLOPT_BUFFERSIZE
Section: 3
Source: libcurl
See-also:
  - CURLOPT_MAXFILESIZE (3)
  - CURLOPT_MAX_RECV_SPEED_LARGE (3)
  - CURLOPT_UPLOAD_BUFFERSIZE (3)
  - CURLOPT_WRITEFUNCTION (3)
Protocol:
  - All
Added-in: 7.10
---

# NAME

CURLOPT_BUFFERSIZE - receive buffer size

# SYNOPSIS

~~~c
#include <curl/curl.h>

CURLcode curl_easy_setopt(CURL *handle, CURLOPT_BUFFERSIZE, long size);
~~~

# DESCRIPTION

Pass a long specifying your preferred *size* (in bytes) for the receive buffer
in libcurl. The main point of this would be that the write callback gets
called more often and with smaller chunks. Secondly, for some protocols, there
is a benefit of having a larger buffer for performance.

This is treated as a request, not an order. You cannot be guaranteed to
actually get the given size.

This buffer size is by default *CURL_MAX_WRITE_SIZE* (16kB). The maximum
buffer size allowed to be set is *CURL_MAX_READ_SIZE* (10MB). The minimum
buffer size allowed to be set is 1024.

DO NOT set this option on a handle that is currently used for an active
transfer as that may lead to unintended consequences.

The maximum size was 512kB until 7.88.0.

Starting in libcurl 8.7.0, there is a single transfer buffer allocated per
multi handle. This buffer is used by all easy handles added to a multi handle
no matter how many parallel transfers there are. The buffer remains allocated
as long as there are active transfers.

# DEFAULT

CURL_MAX_WRITE_SIZE (16kB)

# %PROTOCOLS%

# EXAMPLE

~~~c
int main(void)
{
  CURL *curl = curl_easy_init();
  if(curl) {
    CURLcode result;
    curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_URL, "sftp://example.com/foo.bin");

    /* ask libcurl to allocate a larger receive buffer */
    curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_BUFFERSIZE, 120000L);

    result = curl_easy_perform(curl);

    curl_easy_cleanup(curl);
  }
}
~~~

# %AVAILABILITY%

# 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).
