Best Of
The best skydiving gear, ranked
Honest, tier-by-tier rankings (from budget to premium) so you can spend wisely whatever your budget. Updated for 2026.
Altimeters
Every skydive comes down to one decision made at the right altitude, and an altimeter is the instrument that tells you when to make it. For students drilling the cadence of "check, peel, punch" and for licensed jumpers building wingsuit, freefly, or canopy currency, the device on your wrist (or in your helmet) is a piece of safety equipment first and a gadget second. The market splits into three jobs: visual altimeters you read at a glance, analog needles or digital displays, audibles that beep break-off and pull alerts into your ear, and the newer GPS loggers that record the whole skydive. Most experienced jumpers eventually own both a visual and an audible, because they do genuinely different things and an audible should never replace an active altitude check.
Jumpsuits
A jumpsuit is the most personal piece of gear a skydiver owns after the rig itself. Unlike a canopy or container, it isn't life-support, it's a tuning tool. The right suit sets your fall rate so you can match the group, gives your hands and feet clean air to fly, and (for belly/RW work) hands you grippers and booties that turn body english into control. Get it wrong and you're either sinking out of every formation or burning the legs of your altitude trying to keep up. That's why most experienced jumpers eventually stop borrowing the DZ's loaner bag and buy a suit cut to their body and their discipline.
Goggles
Skydiving is uniquely hard on your eyes. At terminal velocity you're staring into a 120 mph wind, often after climbing through 13,500 feet of temperature swings that love to fog a lens, and a pair of goggles that floods, fogs, or pops off in the door is worse than useless, it's a safety problem. Unlike ski or moto eyewear, jump goggles also have to play nicely with an open-face helmet, sit flat enough not to break the seal, and survive being crushed in the bottom of a gear bag week after week. That's why the category looks so different from a typical Amazon search: the products that working skydivers actually buy are lightweight, vented, frameless, and cheap enough to replace, not $200 fashion pieces.
Helmets
Choosing a skydiving helmet is one of the first real gear decisions a licensed jumper or progressing student makes, and unlike most sporting goods it isn't a category Amazon helps you navigate: the serious options live with specialty rigging lofts like ChutingStar, Para-Gear, Square1, Cookie, Bonehead and Tonfly. The market splits cleanly into two families: open-face helmets (an exposed chin, your goggles seal the wind) and full-face helmets (an integrated flip-up visor). Students under instruction and CReW/tandem pilots often start open-face because it keeps communication and peripheral awareness simple, while most everyone gravitates toward a full-face within their first hundred jumps for the wind-noise reduction, eye protection and camera-ready aesthetics.
Gear Bags
A gear bag is the single piece of skydiving kit you touch on every jump day, yet it's the one most jumpers buy last and think about least. Your rig (main, reserve, container, AAD), represents a $6,000–$9,000 investment, and a good bag is what protects it from sun, grit, hangar floors, baggage handlers, and the slow abrasion of being thrown in and out of a car a hundred times a season. The right bag also keeps a jumpsuit, helmet, altimeter, gloves, goggles, and a logbook organized instead of jumbled, so you spend manifest time gearing up rather than digging.
Containers
A container is the harness plus the two packed trays that ride on your back, and it is the only piece of skydiving gear built specifically around your body. Everything else in a rig is consumable by comparison. Canopies get swapped as you downsize, an AAD gets replaced on a fixed schedule, but a well maintained container from a reputable manufacturer stays in service for fifteen to twenty years of normal sport jumping. That makes it the one purchase where paying attention to fit, standard features and long term supportability actually pays you back.
Main Canopies
A main canopy is the single piece of skydiving equipment that most changes how your jumps feel. The container holds it, the AAD watches over you, but the wing over your head decides how the opening treats your neck, how much runway you need on final, and whether a downwind landing on a hot day is a non-event or a story you tell in the hangar. In 2026 the sport-canopy market is small and specialized. Five manufacturers cover almost everything a licensed jumper or student will realistically buy: Performance Designs, JYRO (formerly NZ Aerosports, still widely called Icarus NZ), Icarus World, Aerodyne Research, and Fluid Wings.
Audible Altimeters
An audible altimeter is the one piece of gear that keeps working when you cannot look at your wrist. In a head-down transition, a poorly-timed barrel roll, or the middle of a 20-way breakoff, your visual altimeter is useless if your arm is somewhere you cannot see it. A helmet-mounted audible solves that by beeping, siren-ing, or speaking altitude directly into your ear canal. For students it builds the altitude awareness habit under supervision. For licensed jumpers it becomes non-negotiable the moment you start flying angles, freeflying, or jumping with more than a couple of other people.
Automatic Activation Devices
An automatic activation device is the one piece of gear on your rig that you hope never does anything. It watches barometric pressure, and if it sees you passing a preset altitude above the ground while still descending faster than a preset speed, it fires a cutter that severs the reserve closing loop. It does not fly the canopy, it does not guarantee a survivable landing, and it does not care whether you were unconscious or simply low. It buys one last chance.
Jump Gloves
Jump gloves solve one problem and create another. They keep your hands warm enough to fly and to find your handles at altitude, and every layer of leather and insulation you add puts distance between your fingertips and the hardware you need to feel. A licensed jumper reaching for a slider bumper or a set of grippers wants tack and articulation. A student rehearsing an emergency procedure wants to know, without looking, that the cutaway pillow is right where it should be. The gloves in this guide are ranked on how well they hold that line, not on how warm they are in a parking lot.
Some links are affiliate links, and we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. It never affects our rankings.
Free tools
More free tools to explore
Everything Map
Every place we have mapped, on one screen.
Open Everything MapRoute Planner
Map a route or browse routes the community has shared.
Open Route PlannerSkydiving Clubs
Find skydiving clubs near you, or start your own with friends.
Open Skydiving ClubsLive Conditions
Real-time conditions for the spots you follow.
Open Live Conditions
