Guide to Buying Your First Paragliding Gear (2025 Edition)

Choosing your first equipment can feel overwhelming. There are dozens of brands, endless options, and a sea of conflicting opinions from instructors, online groups, and sellers — all claiming to have “the best” setup. Prices vary wildly, and it’s hard to know what’s truly important and what’s just marketing.

This guide is written to cut through that noise. It gives you all the information you need in a compact, easy-to-understand way — helping you make confident, informed decisions and understand what you’re actually buying. By the end, you’ll know enough to talk with sellers, compare gear intelligently, and spot both good deals and red flags.

P1 Training at May Paragliding School in Hanoi, Vietnam

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A complete paragliding setup includes several components, but not all are equally critical. The first three are absolutely essential for flight safety:

1. 🪂 Paraglider (Main Wing) – your aircraft and the most important piece of gear. It defines your safety, stability, and progression.

2. 🪖 Harness – your seat, protection, and connection to the wing. Comfort and stability matter far more than weight or looks.

3. 🪬 Reserve Parachute – your emergency backup, required for all solo pilots.

Other supporting items include:

• Helmet (lightweight, EN966 certified for paragliding)

• Variometer (Vario) (for detecting lift when training thermal or XC flying)

• Radio (UHF/VHF, for communication and safety)

• Accessories (gloves, boots, speed bar, flight deck, hook knife, bags, etc.)

This article is long and detailed — it’s meant to be a complete reference. Don’t worry about finishing it in one go. Bookmark it and come back anytime as you learn and compare options.

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🪂 Paraglider – The Heart of Your Setup

Your paraglider wing is your aircraft — it’s what keeps you in the air, responds to your inputs, and defines how safe or demanding your flight will be. For most pilots, this will also be your most expensive piece of equipment and the one that affects your confidence the most.

You should choose your paraglider in the order of: Type, Class, Brand, Size, and lastly Color. Let's talk about each in turn.

🧩 Paraglider Types

Different wings are built for different flying styles, to name a few:

• Hike & Fly Wing: Lightweight and compact, ideal if you plan to hike up mountains and fly down. Note: lighter fabric means shorter lifespan.

• Cross-Country (XC) Wing: Built for longer flights and higher efficiency — not suitable as a first wing.

• Acro Wing: Highly dynamic, used for aerobatic flying. Only for experts.

• Mini / Speed Wing: Specially designed and flown at a smaller size to increase speed and dynamic for super fast down hill and close-to-terrain flying

• Tandem Wing: For two-person flights (pilot + passenger), with special certification.

• Paramotor Wing: Equipped with a trimmer system and made with stronger materials for the use of powered flights with an engine.

👉 It can get complicated really quickly. But for you, first-time buyer, it's simple. Just get the type called "First wing", "School wing", "Beginner wing", or "Standard wing".

⚙️ First Wing Class

Now that you are getting a "First wing", the next step is to choose a class. Again, there are different terminology systems. This chart will help you better understand them.

Paraglider Class Spectrum, putting all the terms into one chart

The Aspect Ratio:

Aspect ratio (AR) is simply the ratio between the wingspan and the width (chord) of your paraglider, or simply how "skinny" your glider looks.

Aspect ratio is kind of like the engine size (cc) of a motorbike. The higher the aspect ratio, the more “performance” you get: faster, better glide ratio, more dynamic — but also, the more demanding and dangerous the wing becomes.

There's the flat aspect ratio (the real measurement of the wing lay flat) and the projected aspect ratio (taking into account the curve of the arc, a.k.a: how the wing is projected to the ground). But for our purpose, let's just take "Flat Aspect Ratio" as the universal metric.

The EN Standard:

Every certified paraglider sold today is tested under the EN standard (European Norm), which measures how the wing behaves in specific, standardized situations — such as collapses, spins, stalls, and recovery behavior.

In simple terms, the EN rating tells you how demanding or forgiving a glider is to fly.

The EN rating officially grades safety, not performance. However, in the real world, pilots and manufacturers also use these categories as a rough performance class.

👉 For you, pick the EnA or low EnB class! And this wing can stay with you all the way until P4 (when you can do cross-country flights) in your progression, so don't worry if you will outgrow it quickly. All of the soaring and thermal training can be perfectly done with this first wing of yours!

📏 Choose Wing Size

Unlike a motorbike, your aircraft needs to be flown at the correct weight loading to perform and behave as intended. That’s why wing size matters a lot.

Every paraglider model comes with a certified weight range, such as 60–80 kg or 70–90 kg.

This is the range that the wing was tested and certified under the EN system. During testing, they fly the wing at either the low end or high end of that range to measure its behavior in collapses, stalls, and recoveries.

When choosing your size, aim for your total all-up weight (AUW) — including your body, harness, reserve, helmet, instruments, clothing, boots, and water — to fall somewhere within that certified range.

A good rule of thumb is to add 10~12kg to your body weight to have your AUW, because most gear these days has the weight around that.

Here’s how loading affects behavior:

• ⚪ Low end of the range: The wing flies slower and feels floatier, but struggles to penetrate strong wind and may feel less precise.

• ⚫ High end of the range: The wing feels more dynamic and responsive, with better wind penetration — but it reacts faster and demands more control.

👉 For your first wing, stay near the middle of the certified range. That gives you a good balance between comfort, safety, and handling while you build experience.

🏷️ Choosing a Brand

All major paragliding brands today produce safe, high-quality wings that meet strict certification standards. You won’t find a “bad” brand in the certified market. You may as well just go with the brand that your school represents. It helps the school make some money while supporting you in the long run.

If you don't have any brand in mind yet, contact us and go with GIN. GIN is one of the global “Big 3” brands — alongside Ozone and Advance.

If we could “power-rank” brands based on different aspects that most pilots generally agree on, it might look like this:

Category	Top Brands	Notes
Performance	🥇 Ozone, 🥈 GIN, 🥉 Niviuk, Flow	Ozone leads in world championships; GIN and Niviuk are close behind.
Build Quality / Craftsmanship	🥇 Advance, 🥈 GIN, 🥉 Niviuk, Skywalk	Advance is famous for Swiss precision; GIN for strong, consistent production.
Product Range	🥇 GIN, 🥈 Ozone	GIN is the best here by a long shot. They literally have everything.
Popularity / Recognition	🥇 Ozone, 🥈 GIN, 🥉 Advance	You’ll find these brands flown everywhere, from schools to World Cups.
Design & Aesthetics	🥇 BGD, 🥈 GIN, 🥉 Advance	BGD’s color schemes are iconic; GIN and Advance offer clean, timeless lines.