Today, industrially manufactured first- and second-generation high-Tc superconductors (HTS) as well as MgB2 wires and tapes are commercially available. First generation HTS are manufactured by the powder-in-tube (PIT) method with piece lengths of more than one km. The engineering critical current density Je(4.2 K, 5 T) of Bi-2212 wires are in the range of 1100–1800 A mm−2 (Jiang et al. in IEEE Trans. Appl. Supercond. 27:6400104, 2017; Jiang et al. in IEEE Trans. Appl. Supercond. 29:6400405, 2019; Oloye et al. in Supercond. Sci. Technol. 34, 035018, 2021; Barua et al. in IEEE Trans. Appl. Supercond. 31:6400406, 2021). Even at magnetic fields as high as 31.2 T the Je can exceed 900 A mm−2 at 4.2 K (Jiang et al. in IEEE Trans. Appl. Supercond. 29:6400405, 2019). The critical current Ic of Ag/Bi-2223 tapes of 4.2 mm width and 0.23 mm thickness reaches 200 A at 77 K and zero applied field (Yamade et al. in Physica C 463–465:821, 2007). The manufacture of second-generation HTS is based on the epitaxial growth of RE-123 films on flexible metallic substrates with suitable buffer layers. In developmental coated conductors with 4.3 and 4.6 μm thick RE-123 films, Je(4.2 K, 14 T) exceeds 5000 A mm−2 (Majkic et al. in Supercond. Sci. Technol. 31, 10LT01, 2018). In a tape of 12 mm width, an Ic(65 K, 0.25 T) as high as 1750 A has been achieved at the University of Houston (Paidpilli et al. in IEEE Trans. Appl. Supercond. 33:6600105, 2023). Furthermore, an overview on the current carrying capacity of MgB2 and iron-based superconductor (IBS) wires and tapes is provided. The effect of stress and strain on the performance of HTS is briefly discussed.