curl/docs/cmdline-opts/cert.md

---
c: Copyright (C) Daniel Stenberg, <daniel@haxx.se>, et al.
SPDX-License-Identifier: curl
Short: E
Long: cert
Arg: <certificate[:password]>
Help: Client certificate file and password
Protocols: TLS
Category: tls
Added: 5.0
Multi: single
See-also:
  - cert-type
  - key
  - key-type
Example:
  - --cert certfile --key keyfile $URL
---

# `--cert`

Tells curl to use the specified client certificate file when getting a file
with HTTPS, FTPS or another SSL-based protocol. The certificate must be in
PKCS#12 format if using Secure Transport, or PEM format if using any other
engine. If the optional password is not specified, it is queried for on
the terminal. Note that this option assumes a certificate file that is the
private key and the client certificate concatenated. See --cert and --key to
specify them independently.

In the \<certificate\> portion of the argument, you must escape the character
`:` as `\:` so that it is not recognized as the password delimiter. Similarly,
you must escape the double quote character as \" so that it is not recognized
as an escape character.

If curl is built against OpenSSL library, and the engine pkcs11 is available,
then a PKCS#11 URI (RFC 7512) can be used to specify a certificate located in
a PKCS#11 device. A string beginning with `pkcs11:` is interpreted as a
PKCS#11 URI. If a PKCS#11 URI is provided, then the --engine option is set as
`pkcs11` if none was provided and the --cert-type option is set as `ENG` if
none was provided.

(iOS and macOS only) If curl is built against Secure Transport, then the
certificate string can either be the name of a certificate/private key in the
system or user keychain, or the path to a PKCS#12-encoded certificate and
private key. If you want to use a file from the current directory, please
precede it with `./` prefix, in order to avoid confusion with a nickname.

(Schannel only) Client certificates must be specified by a path expression to
a certificate store. (Loading *PFX* is not supported; you can import it to a
store first). You can use "\<store location\>\\<store name\>\\<thumbprint\>"
to refer to a certificate in the system certificates store, for example,
*"CurrentUser\MY\934a7ac6f8a5d579285a74fa61e19f23ddfe8d7a"*. Thumbprint is
usually a SHA-1 hex string which you can see in certificate details. Following
store locations are supported: *CurrentUser*, *LocalMachine*,
*CurrentService*, *Services*, *CurrentUserGroupPolicy*,
*LocalMachineGroupPolicy* and *LocalMachineEnterprise*.