Freediving Courses Equivalence Chart

Here, you will find an overview of the different freediving agencies, freediving courses, and freedive instructor courses. Almost all of these freediving agencies acknowledge each other as an ‘official’ freediving certification agency.

With most freediving centers and agencies, you can easily switch from one to another. However, you might need to do an evaluation day, which usually is one day with a pool and open water session. Followed by the exam of the levels you are crossing over from – in some cases, we ask you to do the online exam before you arrive in Panglao.

Since we are an SSI, AIDA, and Molchanovs instructor training center and teach all levels from beginner freediver to freediving instructor, we are very familiar with the three leading global agencies. Switching between them is usually very simple.

Most of the time, Molchanovs freedivers are very skilled—perhaps more all-around than AIDA students—it all depends on the instructor. Our experience is that SSI freedivers are generally of a very high level compared to other agencies.

Crossing over from one agency to another would look something like that.

Course 1. AIDA 2
Course 2. SSI Level 2
Course 3. SSI Level 3

Or

Course 1. PADI Freediver
Course 2. PADI Advanced Freediver
Course 3. Apnea Academy Level 3
Course 4. SSI Level 3

We also regularly receive requests about the PADI and Apnea Total courses and cross-overs. We always evaluate Apnea Total and PADI students to determine their level. With Apnea Total, it depends on the instructor the student had, and because there is no fixed structure in their courses, we can not tell in advance which level course you can take with us. With PADI, crossing over to other agencies should be possible, too, but we usually do an evaluation session since the level of PADI instructors is usually not very high.

Please note: This page is best viewed on a tablet or desktop because of the different tables.

DIVER LEVEL