Survey Results: What is The Best Dive Training Agency in 2025?

TL;DR Overview

The Business of Diving Institute’s third annual survey, gathering feedback from 889 scuba divers—many of whom are experienced professionals like dive instructors and center owners—revealed a concerning trend in customer satisfaction across dive training agencies. No training agency achieved “world-class” (above 80) or “excellent” (above 50) Net Promoter Scores (NPS), a key metric for customer experience and growth. While PADI remains the most recognized agency, most organizations, including PADI, received low or negative NPS scores, indicating a general reluctance among divers to recommend them. Only the Divers Alert Network (DAN) achieved an NPS close to 50, scoring 49, with TDI (22), Dive Heart (14), PFI (13), and SDI (5) also scoring positively in 2025. Looking at specific diving disciplines, TDI (22) and GUE (7) were top for tech diving, SDI (5) for recreational diving, and PFI (12) for freediving. Interestingly, PADI instructors themselves showed a preference for recommending SDI over PADI for recreational training. These findings, alongside consistently high drop-out rates for new divers, strongly suggest that the dive industry needs to re-evaluate and redesign its fundamental business model for introducing people to the underwater world.

Scuba Diving Training Agencies’ Brand Awareness & Familiarity

For each dive training agency, survey participants were asked to provide an answer based on their experience with dive centers & instructors affiliated with that dive training agency or to select “N/A” if they were not aware of that agency or did not know enough to have an opinion.

Therefore, “n/a” is an indirect way of measuring brand awareness & familiarity. And it is no surprise that PADI is the most well-known dive training agency.

Percentage of scuba divers in 2025 who had no knowledge of each dive training agency or did not know enough to have an opinion:

• PADI: 2.1%
• DAN: 11.7%
• SSI: 17.1%
• GUE: 22.0%
• SDI: 23.4%
• TDI: 25.6%
• NAUI: 29.8%
• CMAS: 40.4%
• IANTD: 40.1%
• BSAC: 42.4%
• RAID: 45.2%
• UTD: 58.9%
• PFI: 61.6%
• Dive Heart: 65.5%
• HSA: 65.8%
• PSS: 67.9%
• PSAI: 74.3%
• SEI/PDIC: 74.4%
• NASE: 74.8%
• ACUC: 76.9%

What is a Net Promoter Score (NPS)?

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a widely used metric by organizations to assess the quality of the customer experience and forecast business growth.

NPS uses a scale of 0 (not at all likely to recommend) to 10 (extremely likely to recommend).

Answers fall into three categories:

• Promoter: 9 or 10
• Passive: 7 or 8
• Detractor: 0 to 6

The NPS score is calculated as follows:

• (% of Promoters) - (% of Detractors) = NPS

The Net Promoter Score ranges from -100 to +100.

Achieving a perfect score of 100 is almost impossible for any business to attain. These are the ranges suggested by Bain & Company, the creators of NPS:

• Above 80: World-class
• Above 50: Excellent
• Above 20: Favorable
• Above 0: Good

For instance, Rebreather Forum 4 got an NPS of 62 from its participants, which is excellent!

Scuba Diving Training Agencies Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Scuba divers are critical of dive training agencies, with only the Divers Alert Network (DAN) scoring above 20. Only four other agencies scored above zero: TDI, Dive Heart, PFI, and SDI.

Tab the column header to sort the table by that column.

An empty cell means that the training agency was not on our survey list for that year.

We know that CMAS is an umbrella federation. People were invited to rate the local organization offering scuba courses affiliated with CMAS, such as the Association des Moniteurs CMAS du Québec. Similarly, there is more than one DAN organization, depending of your geographical location.