A new free app finds Britain’s best fish & chip shops, and no shop can pay to be in it

UK, September 2026. Fish & Chips, a new app for finding and visiting the country’s best fish and chip shops, is now available free on iPhone and Android.

Seafish, the seafood industry body, counted around 7,200 fish and chip shops in the UK in June 2026. The app lists 3,262 of them. To get in, a shop needs a strong record of customer reviews on Google and Tripadvisor, sustained over time, and has to clear a bar on its official food hygiene rating. Shops cannot pay to be listed, ranked or featured.

A Top 100, recalculated every month

The app publishes a Top 100 Chippies and a Top 25 Fish & Chip Restaurants, recalculated monthly. Scores come from Google and Tripadvisor ratings, weighted so that a rating backed by thousands of reviews counts for more than one backed by a handful. To qualify, a shop must hold a hygiene rating of 4 or 5 (or a Pass in Scotland), and its menu has to be fish and chips first.

Every listed shop also carries a quality band: Exceptional, Outstanding, Excellent or Great. 932 shops sit in the top two.

Finding a good one near you

Search by town or postcode, or browse on a map. Filters pick out shops that cook to order, cater for gluten-free diets, or still fry in beef dripping (233 of them do). Each of the twelve regions gets its own Shop of the Week, which rotates automatically through the region’s best.

193 listed shops have been recognised in the National Fish & Chip Awards or the Fry Awards, and the app shows which. It also gathers the shops picked by national newspapers and magazines into lists, alongside its own: “The Last Coal Fires” holds the three shops we know of that still fry on coal-fired ranges.

Keeping score

Users check in when they visit (the app confirms they are within 200 metres of the shop) and earn points, with 35 for each shop they have not been to before. Badges mark milestones and regions explored. The first three people to check in at each shop earn gold, silver and bronze medals, and almost every shop is still unclaimed. There are weekly and all-time leaderboards, and groups for friends and families to set their own challenges.

“Every town thinks it has the best chippy, and a lot of them are right. I wanted a guide you could trust when you’re somewhere new and hungry, where every shop has earned its place on what customers and hygiene inspectors say about it. Nobody can buy their way in.”

Free for shops too

There is no charge to be listed and no advertising. Shop owners who want to correct their details can email hello@fishchips.org.uk.

Fish & Chips is free on the App Store and Google Play.

ENDS