Hurghada is one of the cheapest and easiest places in the world to get certified, which is exactly why the choice is confusing. There are more than a dozen PADI courses available here and the names give away very little about which one you need. This is the full list, in the order divers actually work through it.

If you have never dived

Three options, and the difference between them is how much you want to walk away with.

Discover Scuba Diving is a single supervised experience, not a certification. Half a day, a short briefing, then a shallow reef dive with an instructor beside you the whole time. If you only want to know whether you like breathing underwater, start here — and everything you learn counts toward a real course afterwards.

PADI Scuba Diver is the short certification: two days, about half the theory and dives of the full course, and a lifetime card that lets you dive to 12 metres with a professional. It exists for people whose holiday is too short for the full course, and it upgrades later with full credit for everything already done.

PADI Open Water Diver is the one most people mean by "getting certified". Three days, four open-water dives, and a licence to dive to 18 metres with a buddy anywhere in the world, for life. If you have the days, this is the course to take.

If you are already certified

PADI Advanced Open Water is five dives over two days with no exam and no pool. Two are fixed — deep and underwater navigation — and you choose the other three. It extends your limit to 30 metres and is the gate to almost every famous deep site in the Red Sea.

PADI Rescue Diver is the course experienced divers name as the one that changed them. Two to three days of scenario training in stress recognition, self-rescue and helping others, ending in a full emergency simulation. It needs a current Emergency First Response certificate, which is a single day and can be taken immediately before it.

The specialties

Specialties are short focused courses — usually one or two days — that each add one capability. These are the ones running in Hurghada:

  • Enriched Air (Nitrox) — one day, no in-water requirement, and it buys you extra bottom time on every dive of every trip afterwards. The most-taken specialty in the PADI system, and the one that pays for itself fastest.
  • Deep Diver — four dives, extends your limit to 40 metres and teaches the planning and gas management that depth demands.
  • Wreck Diver — four dives on real Red Sea wrecks, covering survey, mapping and line work. Hurghada has a genuine 1970 minesweeper outside the harbour to learn on.
  • Drift Diver — four dives learning to let the current do the work. In Hurghada this is less a novelty than the normal way to dive many of the best sites.
  • Peak Performance Buoyancy — one day, two dives, and the best value in the whole catalogue. Better trim, less air used, and you stop touching the reef.
  • Dry Suit Diver — four dives. Nobody needs a dry suit in the Red Sea, which is exactly why learning it here, in warm forgiving water, is easier than learning it in the cold places that require it.

Specialties you may have searched for

Three PADI specialties come up constantly in searches for Hurghada and are worth knowing about even though they are not currently listed in our catalogue — ask us about scheduling one if you need it.

Search and Recovery teaches search patterns and the use of lift bags to bring an object up in a controlled way. It is a genuinely useful skill and a favourite of divers who like a problem to solve, and it pairs naturally with the navigation specialty.

Underwater Navigation takes the compass work introduced in the Advanced course and turns it into real competence — reciprocal courses, square and triangle patterns, natural navigation and distance estimation. It is the specialty that most changes how confident you feel leading a dive rather than following one.

ReActivate (the refresher) is not a certification but a refresher for divers who have been out of the water for a year or more. Theory review plus a confined-water skills session, usually half a day. If your last dive was several years ago, this is the honest thing to do before joining a boat — and any good centre will suggest it before you ask.

Going professional

PADI Divemaster is where diving becomes a job. Ten to twelve days of real working experience: dive theory to instructor depth, timed watermanship, site mapping, and assisting real courses with real students. It requires Rescue Diver, current EFR, a dive medical and 40 logged dives to start, 60 to certify.

Learning privately

Two courses are also offered one-to-one: the VIP Private Open Water and the VIP Private Advanced Open Water. Same certification, same standards, but one instructor dedicated to you — which is worth considering if you are nervous in water, short on days, or simply want the pace set by you rather than by the slowest person in a group.

How to choose

The short version: if you have never dived and have three days, do the Open Water. If you have two days, do the Scuba Diver and upgrade later. If you are already certified and want more sites open to you, do the Advanced. If you want to become a genuinely better diver rather than a more qualified one, do Peak Performance Buoyancy and Rescue — in that order.

Current prices for every course are on the trips page, and our breakdown of what diving in Hurghada actually costs is in Hurghada diving prices 2026. If the Open Water is the one you are weighing up, getting PADI certified in Egypt covers that single course in detail. And if you are still deciding between centres, how to choose a dive centre in Hurghada lists the checks worth making.