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

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

Key Differences

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

Feature

Fish Shell

Dev Tools

Starship

Dev Tools

Side-by-side comparison of developer tools
User-friendly command line shell
Cross-shell prompt
GitHub Stars
⭐ 33,352
⭐ 57,122
Contributors
👥 1,222
👥 665
Pricing
✓ Free
Enterprise: Contact sales
✓ Free
Enterprise: Contact sales
Languages
Rust
Rust
Features
  • • Fish
  • • Rust
  • • Shell
  • • Terminal
  • • Bash
  • • Fish
  • • Fish Prompt
  • • Fish Theme
  • • Oh My Zsh
Integrations
No integrations listed
  • • prometheus
Momentum Score
41/100 (stable)
55/100 (slowing)
Community Health
50/100 (developing)
68/100 (moderate)
Maturity Index
63/100 (growing)
60/100 (growing)
Innovation Score
34/100 (traditional)
70/100 (innovative)
Risk Score (higher is safer)
76/100 (minimal)
53/100 (low)
Developer Experience
36/100 (poor)
68/100 (fair)
Links
🌐 Visit Website View on GitHub
🌐 Visit Website View on GitHub

Fish Shell Strengths

  • ✓ Larger community (1,222 contributors)

Starship Strengths

  • ✓ More popular (57,122 stars)
  • ✓ More features (5 listed)

When to Use Fish Shell vs Starship

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

Related comparisons

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

More Comparisons

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Data source: GitHub API

Last updated: 5/4/2026