Ray-finned fishes represent over half of the total vertebrate diversity of the planet. Yet, at the beginning of this decade, the most successful branch in the vertebrate tree of life was ranked the lowest in terms of taxonomic sampling and phylogenetic resolution. In recent years, a focused phylogenetic effort across the ichthyological community has resulted in three large fish ‘Trees of Life’. Although incomplete at various scales, these trees have provided an unprecedented opportunity to explore numerous dynamics underpinning the diversification of fishes across the globe. On the eve of the genomic revolution for fish phylogenetics, the systematic implications of these trees, comparisons with their predecessors and their topographic concordance with fossil and morphological evidence is needed to gauge current and future progress. We examine the acceleration these new phylogenies represent to the phylogenetic resolution of the ray-finned fishes, their ability to provide a taxonomic consensus to fish classification, and whether there is significant agreement or disagreement with morphological classification.