curl is amazing[0]. But I use maybe 10% of it. And AFAIK it can't be statically linked. Is there an alternative that includes mainly the HTTP functionality and is static?
Someone got a static build working on MacOS: https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/9359 (it looks like a pain, but certainly doable given enough time and dependency fiddling)
If you've got perl installed you'll might have a "GET" binary present, mine is /usr/bin/GET, which comes with the WWW-module.
Although this is written in portable perl, rather than being compiled, so the static vs. dynamic choice doesn't really mean much it is a simple alternative.
Otherwise I built a simple busybox-inspired collection of tools, written in golang, which includes a simple HTTP client too:
Those are just a couple of examples, I'm certain there are multiple other choices out there. But I guess curl is ubiquitous enough that most people just use it directly, and add it when missing!
[0]: you can read my blog using curl: https://apitman.com/17/#curlable