I can obviously manually check perl.org

If you can do it manually, you can tell perl to do it. TIMTOWTDI als always:

• Perl Download:

  perl -MLWP::Simple -le 'get("https://www.perl.org/get.html") =~ /lates
  +t stable version, currently ([\d\.]+)\./ and print $1'
  5.24.1
  [download]

• Perl Source:

  perl -MLWP::Simple -le 'get("http://www.cpan.org/src") =~ /([\d\.]+)\s
  ++<td>Maint/ and print $1'
  5.24.1
  [download]

at the time of writing this node.

Index of /src/5.0 on The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network is outdated at the moment, since it tells latest_maint_is_5.14.1. The links haven't been adjusted for a long time...