At the Olympics, all dives are scored by a panel of judges. The judges rate the execution (and synchronization, for synchro events) of every dive on a scale of 1-10, including half-point margins.

Individual events

Individual diving events are scored by a panel of seven judges. Once all seven judges submit their scores for a dive, the highest two scores and lowest two scores are eliminated. The remaining three scores are added together to achieve the execution score, which is multiplied by the dive's degree of difficulty to determine the total score of the dive.

Synchronized events

Synchronized diving events are scored by a total of 11 judges. Three judges focus on scoring the execution of only one individual diver of the pair, while a separate trio of judges focuses only on the other individual diver. The remaining five judges score the pair's synchronization.

Of the 11 total judges' scores, five are used: the median execution score for Diver 1, the median execution score for Diver 2, and the middle three synchronization scores. The five scores are then added together, multiplied by 0.6 (to more closely align with scores from the individual events), then multiplied by the dive's degree of difficulty to determine the total score of the dive.

Judges scoring execution are instructed to examine four parts of each dive: 

• Starting position/approach
• Take-off 
• Flight
• Entry into the water

Each judge must then arrive at a single score that considers the execution of all four parts of the dive.

Judges scoring synchronization focus on six aspects, and also must arrive at a single score that considers all of them: 

• Starting position/approach 
• Take-off (including similarity of height)
• Coordinated timing of movements during flight
• Similarity of angles of entry
• Comparative distance from the board at entry
• Coordinated timing of entry

Excellent:                   10 

Very Good:             8.5-9.5 

Good:                      7.0-8.0 

Satisfactory:           5.0-6.5 

Deficient:                2.5-4.5 

Unsatisfactory:       0.5-2.0 

Completely failed:      0  

In order to prevent outlier scores from significantly impacting a diver's ranking, the highest and lowest scores are not considered when calculating a dive's total score. Scores that are not considered are crossed out.

For individual events, a diver's two highest and two lowest scores are crossed out.

For synchronized events, the highest and lowest scores are crossed out for each diver's individual execution score, as well as the pair's synchronization score.