Fish vs Zsh Shells

Users compare fish shell favorably to zsh and bash for its out-of-the-box features, performance, autosuggestions, and usability, debating switches and configurations like oh-my-zsh.

➡️ Stable 0.6x DevOps & Infrastructure
5,193
Comments
19
Years Active
5
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#3098
Topic ID

Activity Over Time

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Keywords

xon.sh OSX ZSH POSIX OS github.com SHELL TIL ycombinator.com fishshell.com zsh fish shell bash shells command oh tried echo exit

Sample Comments

chovybizzass Jan 27, 2021 View on HN

How does fish compare to zsh? I just switched from bash to zsh and am loving it.

flohofwoe Jan 27, 2021 View on HN

I switched from fish to zsh once I found this plugin:https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestionsNow zsh feels just like fish, but with bash-compatible syntax (which was the main day-to-day problem I had with fish, otherwise it's fine, but except for the auto-suggestions I didn't really use any special fish features).

ilaksh Sep 14, 2016 View on HN

Bash has lots of cool features, but zsh has more and better defaults, and fish is even better.

hestefisk Dec 28, 2018 View on HN

Long time zsh user here. Any reason one should try out fish?

AnthonBerg Jun 6, 2012 View on HN

Tried fish yet? I prefer it to zsh ...

assbuttbuttass Oct 20, 2021 View on HN

I tried switching to zsh, but I felt like out of the box it's almost the same as bash. I don't want to spend a lot of time configuring my shell, I want it to get out of my way and let me type commands.I use fish shell mostly these days. Magic autocompletion is life-changing.

jpmonette Jul 20, 2025 View on HN

Fish is the way to go! Used to be a fan of ZSH but also struggled with performance issues. No performance issue with Fish! Only issue might be plugins / some copy/paste bash stuff, but it's so worth the performance.

fellowmartian Mar 13, 2024 View on HN

Many people suggesting zsh, but if you’re willing to move to fish you’ll get many features out of the box.

slurgfest Sep 28, 2012 View on HN

What are your top reasons to use fish over zsh? (Bearing in mind, of course, that it's ultimately a matter of preference...)

StavrosK Jan 21, 2012 View on HN

I downloaded "oh my zsh", never looked back. Of course, I only made it look exactly like fish, which is what I was using, but it's less buggy than fish.