Aquaculture is expanding and intensifying globally, with implications for environmental, livelihood, food security and nutrition impacts. However, the way that aquaculture impacts people and the environment varies significantly across the globe, making it important to understand what factors shape different trajectories. Here we compile and integrate 45 country-level indicators to examine the social, economic, governance and environmental conditions shaping aquaculture development across 150 countries. We apply cluster analysis to identify social-ecological archetypes of aquaculture development. We empirically identify four archetypes driven by both social and ecological factors including: climate risk, inland water area, coastal population, seafood consumption, trade balance, governance indices and environmental performance. We name the four identified archetypes of aquaculture as: Archetype 1 - Emerging aquaculture producers, Archetype 2 - Limited aquatic food engagement, Archetype 3 - Developing economy producers, Archetype 4 - Wealthy economy producers. Each archetype is defined by its distinct range of values across the 45 indicators from the countries within the archetype. We discuss the utility of identifying country-level archetypes for both continued research and development practice as well as compare our archetypes with current literature on aquaculture development scenarios.