Caught something you don’t recognize? You can identify almost any fish from four clues — body shape, fins, color, and where you found it. Here’s how, plus a way to skip straight to the answer.
Free on iOS · Names the species from one photo
Before fins or color, the silhouette tells you which family you’re looking at. Match your fish to one of these four.
Fast open-water swimmers — tuna, mackerel, salmon, trout. Built for speed and distance.
Deep-bodied panfish — bream, sunfish, perch, bass. Common in lakes and slow rivers.
Elongated bodies — eels, pike, barracuda. Ambush predators built to strike.
Flat undersides and barbels — catfish, flatfish, rays. Feed along the seabed or riverbed.
Torpedo, deep-bodied, or eel-like? Shape narrows the family before anything else.
Spiny vs soft dorsal fins, and whether there’s a small adipose fin near the tail (trout, salmon, catfish).
Stripes, spots, and lateral lines are often species-specific — note them before the fish fades out of water.
Freshwater vs saltwater and the region rules out most of the world’s species instantly.
A clear side-on photo scanned in the app returns the exact species with a confidence score.
The Fish Identifier app names the species from a single photo and gives you 30+ facts — habitat, diet, edibility, and local regulations.
Take a clear side-on photo showing the whole fish, then compare body shape, fin placement, and coloration against reference guides — or scan the photo with an AI app like Fish Identifier, which returns the common name, scientific name, family, and a confidence score in seconds.
Fish Identifier is a free iOS app that recognizes freshwater, saltwater, and brackish species worldwide from a single photo. Alongside the species name it returns 30+ facts covering habitat, diet, edibility, and regional fishing regulations.
Edibility depends on the species, its size, and local advisories about mercury or pollution. Fish Identifier flags whether a species is generally considered edible, but always check current local fishing and consumption regulations before keeping a catch.
Yes. A clear photo — from the shore, a boat, a market display, or an underwater shot — is enough to identify most species. You do not need to handle the fish.