Exa vs Fish Shell: Key Differences & When to Use Each

Comprehensive side-by-side comparison of features, pricing, and metrics

Key Differences

Compare Exa and Fish Shell across features, pricing, integrations, and community metrics. Exa / Fish Shell.

Feature

Exa

Dev Tools

Fish Shell

Dev Tools

Side-by-side comparison of developer tools
Modern replacement for ls
User-friendly command line shell
GitHub Stars
⭐ 24,442
⭐ 33,352
Contributors
👥 163
👥 1,222
Pricing
✓ Free
Enterprise: Contact sales
✓ Free
Enterprise: Contact sales
Languages
Rust
Rust
Features
  • • Command Line
  • • Files
  • • Ls
  • • Rust
  • • Fish
  • • Rust
  • • Shell
  • • Terminal
Integrations
No integrations listed
No integrations listed
Momentum Score
12/100 (stable)
41/100 (stable)
Community Health
18/100 (needs-attention)
50/100 (developing)
Maturity Index
23/100 (experimental)
63/100 (growing)
Innovation Score
21/100 (traditional)
34/100 (traditional)
Risk Score (higher is safer)
22/100 (high)
76/100 (minimal)
Developer Experience
24/100 (poor)
36/100 (poor)
Links
🌐 Visit Website View on GitHub
🌐 Visit Website View on GitHub

Exa Strengths

Fish Shell Strengths

  • ✓ More popular (33,352 stars)
  • ✓ Larger community (1,222 contributors)

When to Use Exa vs Fish Shell

Use Exa when its strengths align better with your stack and team needs, and choose Fish Shell when its ecosystem, integrations, or cost profile is a better fit.

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Exa vs Oh My Zsh → Fish Shell vs Oh My Zsh → Exa vs VS Code → Fish Shell vs VS Code → Exa vs Node.js → Fish Shell vs Node.js → Exa vs Neovim → Fish Shell vs Neovim → Exa vs FZF → Fish Shell vs FZF → Exa vs Ripgrep → Fish Shell vs Ripgrep →

More Comparisons

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Data source: GitHub API

Last updated: 5/4/2026