What a PADI Open Water Course Costs in Belize: Six Dive Shops' Published Prices

Checked on 26 August 2026, on the published price pages of six Belize dive shops — two on Caye Caulker, three in San Pedro on Ambergris Caye, one in Placencia — plus a seventh for its nitrox price.

A standard, in-person PADI Open Water course in Belize is advertised between US$460 and US$550. Caye Caulker is the cheap end and San Pedro the expensive one, and the gap is wider than the sticker prices suggest, because the Caye Caulker figure includes tax and the San Pedro ones do not. Scuba Sensation on Caye Caulker charges US$460.00 with tax included; Ramon’s Village Divers in San Pedro charges US$500 plus a stated 12.5% sales tax, which is US$562.50; Ecologic Divers in San Pedro charges US$550 plus the same stated tax, which is US$618.75.

The advertised spread is US$90. The spread once each shop’s own tax statement is applied is US$158.75 — so on this cohort of shops the single largest lever on the price of learning to dive in Belize is which island you do it on.

PADI Open Water Diver — every shop we could price

The “with tax applied” column is our arithmetic on each shop’s own stated rate. Where a shop does not state a tax treatment we have not invented one.

Amigos del Mar’s figures are printed here with a bare “$” because that is how its own pages print them. Its course table and trip pages carry no currency statement anywhere — the single exception is its Great Blue Hole trip, printed "$285 USD". At Belize’s fixed BZ$2 = US$1 peg an unlabelled dollar figure is a two-fold ambiguity, and we will not resolve it by guessing. Every other figure on this page comes from a page that says USD.

Against Scuba Sensation’s tax-inclusive US$460, Ramon’s works out US$102.50 more (22.3%) and Ecologic US$158.75 more (34.5%).

Scuba Sensation also lists an SDI Open Water course at US$450 USD on its home page — a different certifying agency, and below the lowest figure in the table above. It is not the lowest Open Water figure in this research. Ramon’s prints US$400 for an eLearning Open Water, where the classroom half is done online before you arrive; its own stated 12.5% tax would take that to US$450. That is why the US$460–US$550 range at the top of this page is stated for the standard, in-person course — the eLearning and referral formats sit below it and are not the same product.

Seahorse Dive Shop in Placencia lists a full PADI Open Water certification course but publishes no price for it — its course index carries no figure against any course, so nothing there can be ranked. The only Seahorse course prices we could read are on its individual referral and Discover Scuba pages. See below.

What each price actually buys

• Scuba Sensation (Caye Caulker), US$460.00 — “Price includes rental equipment, e learning code, and PADI registration.” Two days, starting every day at 8:15 AM; five tanks in total, one confined-water dive plus four open-water dives. US$100 deposit. “Once redeemed, the e-learning codes are non-refundable.”
• Frenchie’s (Caye Caulker), US$480 USD per person — non-refundable deposit US$95.
• Ramon’s Village Divers (San Pedro), US$500 — four open-water dives plus five classes covering gear, marine life and diving physics.
• Ecologic Divers (San Pedro), US$550 USD — instructional video, a multiple-choice test drawn from the first five chapters of the Open Water manual, confined-water skills instruction and four open-water dives, plus a US$40 manual, a US$30 PIC fee and dive gear.

Discover Scuba — the one-day try dive, same pattern

Seahorse’s US$185 is not comparable to a pre-tax US$170: “Pricing includes all diving equipment, Discover Scuba Diving Course, Try Dive, and one boat dive, Lunch, Conservation Fees fees, 12.5% Sales Tax, and PADI Dive Instructor.” It is the only figure in that column with the tax, the park fee and lunch already inside it.

Ecologic describes its US$170 as “viewing of a training video, learning about and setting up the dive gear, learning basic dive skills, and a one tank dive. Use of dive gear is included.”

Advanced Open Water — where the ranking can flip

This is the case that shows why the printed number is not the answer — and why the answer needs a condition attached:

Ramon’s advertises the cheapest Advanced course in this set and may not be the cheapest one to pay for. At US$450 it undercuts both Caye Caulker shops on the sticker; at US$506.25 after its own stated tax it is dearer than both.

That reversal is conditional, and the condition is worth stating. Scuba Sensation’s “pricing includes tax” wording is printed on its Open Water course page. Its Advanced US$460 — like its Discover Scuba US$160 and its SDI US$450 — is printed on its home page, which says nothing about tax at all. If the shop’s tax statement covers every price it publishes, the flip above holds. If the Advanced figure is instead pre-tax and the same 12.5% were applied, it would come to US$517.50 and Ramon’s US$506.25 would be the cheaper of the two, reversing the reversal. The shop publishes nothing that settles which reading is right, so take the flip as conditional rather than as a finding.

Amigos del Mar lists an SSI Advanced Adventure Diver course at $450.00 ($480.00 also shown), “Includes 5 Dives”, over 2 days — a different certification, and a page that states neither tax nor currency, so we are not ranking it against the PADI ones.

Referral courses — and the one shop that puts everything inside the price

If you have done the classroom and pool work at home, the referral is the open-water half:

Seahorse is both the cheapest and the most inclusive: its US$350 covers “4 open water dive (2 dives per day), All diving equipment, PADI certification card processing, Marine Reserve Conservation Fees, 12.5% General Sales Tax”, plus lunch and a PADI Dive Instructor. It is the only shop in this set that states both the tax and the park fee are already inside the printed number.

The rest of the published course prices

Printed as published. Ecologic’s and Ramon’s pages both state 12.5% sales tax on top; the others state nothing. The Amigos column is printed with a bare “$” because its pages state no currency.

Nitrox fills on Caye Caulker are US$7.50 USD per tank at Sunrise Scuba, which states it is “Currently the only Nitrox provider on Caye Caulker.” That is the only price published anywhere on that shop’s site.

Snorkelling: there is no certification to buy

Snorkel certification does not exist, so there is nothing here to price. Every snorkel figure below is a guided trip price, not a course.

The cleanest dive-versus-snorkel comparison we found is Seahorse’s local barrier-reef day out of Placencia, where both seats are on the same boat with the same inclusions — “2 guided dives or 2 snorkel session, All Diving and Snorkeling Equipment, Belizean-Style Lunch, Bottled Water, Beach towels, Marine Reserve Conservation fees, Hotel Transfer (some restrictions may apply), 12.5% Sales Tax”. Minimum 5 divers; departs 9:00 a.m., returns 3:00 p.m.

A US$50 difference. Frenchie’s shows a wider one on its long-range trips: Turneffe North US$245 diving against US$125 snorkelling, and its Lighthouse Reef package US$355 diving against US$190 snorkelling.

For a shorter San Pedro half day, Amigos del Mar prices the Hol Chan and Shark Ray Alley snorkel trip at $50.00 — currency not stated on the page — with the marine entrance fee explicitly NOT included — "$15USD (Cash) Marine Entrance Fee", “paid directly at our office in cash”.

Day trips, for scale against the courses

The Amigos del Mar rows carry a bare “$” for the reason given above. Its Great Blue Hole trip is the one figure that shop labels: "$285 USD".

The park fee: US$15 at Hol Chan, and a separate US$10 that is not it

The marine-reserve fee is charged separately, in cash, on the day. The Hol Chan figure is US$15 per person, and three things point at it together:

1. The last announcement traceable to the reserve itself. Hol Chan Marine Reserve issued a press release dated 27 July 2024, reported by The San Pedro Sun, setting the fee at “US$15 for all 15 zones” effective 1 August 2024 and quoting Executive Director Ian Pou. Pre-booked tours before that date were honoured at the old price.
2. The operators collecting it in 2026 publish the same number. Amigos del Mar prints "$15USD (Cash) Marine Entrance Fee" and Belize Diving Adventures prints “Park fees for: Hol Chan US$15.00 p/p”, both read 26 August 2026.
3. The two figures that are not the current fee. US$10 is the fee the 2024 increase replaced — “up from US$10”, in the same report — and it is still widely repeated in travel writing. A rise to US$20 was proposed in 2024 and never took effect; it was settled at US$15.

Frenchie’s on Caye Caulker prints a separate “$10 Park Fee” inside its local reef dive price and does not name the reserve, so that figure is most likely the Caye Caulker Marine Reserve rather than Hol Chan. Read it as a Caye Caulker Marine Reserve figure rather than a Hol Chan rate.

What is still missing is a page from the reserve itself: holchanbelize.org was serving a suspended-account notice on 26 August 2026 and holchanmarinereserve.org returned 404, so nothing here is read off the authority’s own site — the press release reaches us through a newspaper. Our Hol Chan and Shark Ray Alley page carries the full fee history and both operators’ tour prices. Carry US$15 per person in cash, and ask your operator which reserve the fee is for.

What the dive shops don’t publish

• Splash Dive Center (Placencia) publishes no prices at all. We checked both its own course pages and a partner listing; both direct readers to phone or email.
• Blue Wave Divers (Caye Caulker) could not be read: its TLS certificate has expired, so the page will not load cleanly.
• Belize Diving Services (Caye Caulker) now redirects to another operator’s domain, whose dive-courses page returns 404.
• Sea Sports Belize’s course price page returns 404.
• PADI itself publishes no price. Its own Open Water Diver store page lists no figure for the eLearning component; PADI routes pricing through individual dive centres, so there is no national list price to compare against.
• What Amigos del Mar’s second number means. Its table prints two unlabelled figures per course — “PADI Open Water Diver Course $550.00 $580.00” — with no column header, footnote or legend explaining whether the pair is discount and regular, cash and card, or one person and two. We record the lower figure and disclose the pair; neither should be presented as “the price” alone. Its SSI Open Water shows the same $550.00 / $580.00 pair, printed with the same bare “$”.
• Whether Ramon’s dive courses are taxed the same way when booked as part of a stay. Its rate page states the 12.5% sales tax on courses but does not restate it on the resort’s accommodation rate table.
• Amigos del Mar’s tax treatment — and its currency. Its course table and its trip pages carry no tax note at all, and no currency statement either: every figure is a bare “$”. The one exception is its Great Blue Hole trip, printed "$285 USD". Its figures appear here exactly as published, unconverted and with no tax added.
• Which of Scuba Sensation’s prices its tax statement covers. “Pricing includes tax” is printed on its Open Water course page. Its Advanced, Discover Scuba and SDI figures are printed on its home page, which says nothing about tax.
• Any Seahorse course price beyond two pages. Its course index lists nine courses, including a full Open Water certification, and prints no figure against any of them. Only its referral and Discover Scuba pages carry prices.

How we researched this

Scope: this page reports source research, not an on-site test. We checked the booking systems, timetables and official sources named below on the date shown; calculations, unresolved disagreements and information we could not verify are labelled explicitly.

Every price on this page was read on 26 August 2026 from the dive shop’s own website — course pages where the shop publishes one, home-page price lists where it does not. We name the shop and the town against every figure, because “diving in Belize costs X” is not a fact that exists: it varies by island, by agency and by whether the shop puts tax inside its number.

Tax treatment is quoted from the page that states it. Where we apply it, the arithmetic is ours and the rate is the shop’s own stated rate; where a shop states nothing, we print the figure as published and say so. Comparisons were computed at every price in the range rather than at the endpoints — which is how the Advanced Open Water ranking turned out to reverse.

Four of the shops we tried to include could not be priced at all, for the reasons listed above — Splash Dive Center, Blue Wave Divers, Belize Diving Services and Sea Sports Belize. That is why this page prices six shops, plus Sunrise Scuba for its single nitrox figure, and not ten.

Last verified: 26 August 2026. Course prices, deposits and park fees change without notice.

Sources:

Figures on this page labelled our arithmetic are calculated by us from the sourced inputs cited below — comparisons, percentages, multiples, differences, per-night and per-person conversions, running totals and currency conversions. Every other figure is reproduced as its named source published it. Where an operator or authority publishes a per-person or per-night rate directly, that is their figure and it is attributed to them at the point it appears.

Sources

• Scuba Sensation, Open Water course and home page — Caye Caulker Open Water US$460.00, its inclusions and tax statement, Discover Scuba, Advanced and SDI prices
• Frenchie’s Diving Services — Caye Caulker course and trip price list, deposits, and the “$10 Park Fee” inside its local reef dive
• Ramon’s Village Resort, scuba courses — San Pedro course list and the 12.5% sales tax statement
• Ecologic Divers, PADI courses and home page — San Pedro course list, inclusions, the GST-not-included statement, and the shop’s location
• Amigos del Mar, course table, home page and Hol Chan trip — San Pedro course pairs, dive-trip prices, the snorkel trip and the US$15 cash marine fee
• Seahorse Dive Shop — Open Water referral, Discover Scuba and local reef trip — the Placencia prices, and the only figures found with tax and conservation fees stated as included
• Sunrise Scuba — the US$7.50 nitrox fill and its sole-provider statement for Caye Caulker
• The San Pedro Sun, 1 August 2024 — the Hol Chan press release of 27 July 2024, the US$15 fee, the “all 15 zones” wording and the 1 August 2024 effective date
• San Pedro Sun, 29 June 2024 — the US$10 fee the increase replaced, the paused US$20 proposal and the guides’ US$15 position
• Belize Diving Adventures — rates — the “Park fees for: Hol Chan US$15.00 p/p” line
• Hol Chan Marine Reserve — listed because we tried it: it served a suspended-account notice on 26 August 2026
• PADI Open Water Diver store page — no published price for the eLearning component

Written by Estuardo Enriquez. This site is independent, carries no affiliate relationship with any dive shop named here, and is not connected to any previous owner of this domain.