USDAA vs AKC Agility

Both welcome mixed breeds. USDAA takes any dog, purebred or mixed, once it’s registered with USDAA. AKC takes registered purebreds, and mixed breeds through Canine Partners, which asks that the dog be spayed or neutered before it competes.

A dog can start AKC agility at 15 months. In USDAA the youngest age is 15 to 18 months, depending on the program. USDAA runs Championship, Performance, Veterans and Intro programs, and its Veterans classes are for dogs 8 and older.

AKC has three classes with their own title ladders: Standard, Jumpers With Weaves and FAST. Time 2 Beat and Premier sit alongside them with titles of their own. Each one is a separate track, so a dog can be in Master Standard and Open FAST at the same time.

USDAA has five titling classes: Standard, Gamblers, Jumpers, Snooker and Relay, and each has its own title at each level. Gamblers and Snooker are points games, and Relay is run with a partner, so the Advanced Relay title takes Qs with 3 different partners. USDAA also has tournament classes, Grand Prix, Steeplechase and Dog Agility Masters, which count toward the Tournament Dog and Tournament Master titles.

AKC has four levels: Novice, Open, Excellent and Master. USDAA has Starters, Advanced and Masters, plus Intro, which makes four. In both, each class moves up on its own, so a dog can be at one level in Standard and another in Jumpers.

In AKC, moving up is your choice after a title, and a dog can keep running its level until it earns a Q at the next one. In USDAA, moving up is also a choice, and you can enter a higher level early, but once a dog titles at a level in a class, it can’t drop below it in that class. Our dog agility levels chart lines up both sets of levels.

AKC scores Standard and Jumpers runs out of 100. A Q at Novice, Open and Excellent is a score of 85 or more, and at Master it has to be a perfect 100. The lower levels forgive a refusal or two, but at Excellent any refusal, run-out or wrong course is an NQ, so time is the one place a dog can lose points.

In USDAA, a Standard or Jumpers Q is a clean run with no faults, under course time. The games work differently. In Gamblers your dog has to finish the gamble without a fault and reach the opening minimum for that course, from 13 to 35 points. A Snooker Q takes at least 37 points at every level, and a Relay Q needs your team’s time plus faults inside the qualifying course time.

AKC’s FAST is the closest thing to a USDAA game. Your dog collects points for the obstacles it does and has to finish the send bonus, and a Q takes 50 points in Novice, 55 in Open and 60 in Excellent and Master, out of a possible 80.

USDAA titles take 3 Qs at Starters and Advanced and 5 at Masters, in each of the five classes. Snooker Master is the tricky one: 3 of its 5 Qs have to be Super Qs, which means qualifying and also placing in about the top 20% of the class.

USDAA adds Versatility titles on top. When your dog has the Standard title at a level and one Q in each of the other four classes at that level, it earns that level’s Versatility title: AD, AAD or MAD in Championship, and PD, APD or MPD in Performance.

AKC titles take 3 Qs at Novice, Open and Excellent and 10 at Master, with Standard and Jumpers With Weaves climbing side by side.

After Master, AKC keeps counting with the Master metal titles, one for every 25 Qs in each class. The lower-jump programs line up too, with one difference. USDAA Performance titles carry a P, like SPS, APS and PSM, and Qs from Championship height count toward them, though Performance Qs don’t count toward Championship titles. AKC Preferred titles also carry a P, like NAP and AXP, but Regular and Preferred are separate programs, so titles don’t move from one to the other.

A MACH takes 750 MACH points and 20 double Qs, all from Master Standard and Master Jumpers With Weaves. Your dog earns one point for every full second it finishes under course time on a qualifying run, and a double Q is a Q in both classes on the same day. The count keeps going, so MACH2 is 1,500 points and 40 double Qs. PACH is the Preferred version, and AKC’s AGCH counts Master-level Qs across six classes instead.

ADCH, Agility Dog Champion, is built from titles rather than points. It takes all five USDAA Masters titles plus Tournament Dog, which is 5 tournament Qs with at least one each in Grand Prix, Steeplechase and Dog Agility Masters. Starting in 2027, the Standard part changes to Standard Agility Champion, which takes 10 Masters Standard Qs instead of 5.

USDAA also has a Champion title in each Masters class at 10 Masters Qs, like SACH and JCH, and then metal tiers from Bronze at 15 Qs to Diamond at 100. Our agility championship titles compared page has both side by side with the other organizations.

The heights are the same, but the cut-offs between them sit in slightly different places. A 17-inch dog lands in the same spot in both: it jumps 16 inches in USDAA Championship and AKC Regular, 12 in USDAA Performance or AKC Preferred, and 8 in USDAA Veterans. AKC Preferred dogs also get 5 extra seconds of course time in Standard and Jumpers.

Both let a dog jump higher than its measured height. In USDAA a dog can always move up to a bigger division’s Championship height, and in AKC a dog can enter a higher Regular height, though never a lower one, and any dog 22 inches or under can choose 24C instead. The dog jump height chart works out your dog’s height in both.

The games classes are the biggest part of it. In USDAA, Gamblers, Snooker and Relay each carry their own titles and feed into the Versatility titles and ADCH. The tournament classes add another layer, and USDAA is also the organization that picks the US team for the IFCS world championships.

AKC has its own extras that USDAA doesn’t: FAST, Time 2 Beat and Premier each have their own titles, Novice A is set aside for a new dog with a handler who has never titled a dog in AKC agility, and the Master metal titles add one for every 25 Master Qs in each class. Neither set is better. They’re different ways of building a career.

Yes, and plenty of handlers run in more than one organization. Each one keeps its own titles and record, so a run counts only in the organization that held the trial. Neither has a rule about the other’s titles, and USDAA lets you enter whatever level you think fits your dog.

That means two sets of records: Qs toward each USDAA class title and ADCH, and Qs, points and double Qs toward AKC titles and the MACH. Keeping them apart from the start makes it much easier to see where your dog stands in each.