I think LWP is more equivalent to Python's urllib2 (ie. both big beasts!). So this i believe is closer to what LWP::UserAgent (https://metacpan.org/module/LWP::UserAgent) does.

Also check out Mojo::UserAgent (https://metacpan.org/module/Mojo::UserAgent) for a nice(er) alternative. And don't forget that Perl now comes a nice lightweight alternative as standard: https://metacpan.org/module/HTTP::Tiny