This study was designed to determine the effect of complete substitution of fish meal (FM) by three plant protein sources including extruded soybean meal (SBM), extruded full‐fat soybean (FFSB) and corn gluten meal (CGM) on growth and feed utilization of Nile tilapia Oreochromis niloticus and tilapia galilae Sarothrodon galilaeus. Four isonitrogenous of crude protein (ca. 28.0%) and isocaloric (ca. 19 MJ kg−1) experimental diets were formulated. The control diet (diet 1) was prepared with FM as the main protein sources. Diets 2–4, each FM control diet, were completely substituted with SBM (diet 2), FFSB (diet 3) and CGM (diet 4). l‐lysine and dl‐methionine were added to plant protein diets to cover the nutritional requirements of tilapia. Each treatment was allocated to three net pens and fed for 17 weeks. Nile tilapia fed the control diet showed significantly higher (P≤0.05) values for final body weight (FBW), feed intake (FI), weight gain (WG) and specific growth rate (SGR), whereas fish fed the diet with CGM achieved the lowest values. Tilapia galilae fed SBM diet recorded the highest (P≤0.05) values for growth performance. Better feed conversion ratio (FCR) for both Oreochromis niloticus and Sarothrodon galilaeus was observed when fish were fed SBM diet, whereas the worse FCR was recorded for FFSB diet. Feed utilization parameters including protein productive value (PPV), fat retention (FR) and energy retention (ER) showed significant differences (P≤0.05) for both the species fed different dietary protein sources. The present results suggest that, for Nile tilapia, both SBM and FFSB supplemented with dl‐methionine and l‐lysine can completely replace dietary FM. Meanwhile, S. galilaeus fed SBM diet exhibited comparable growth and feed utilization with those fish fed a fish‐meal‐based diet.