In underground mining, selection of support system for the main entries plays a significant role in the safety and economics of operations. Traditionally, this selection is done on the basis of the experience of the mining design engineer. The accuracy of such selection is questionable. In this paper a new method is introduced for selecting the optimum tunnel support system based on Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). In this approach, the selection process is assumed to be a multi criteria decision-making problem. Different support systems are first specified by using numerical Finite Difference Method (FDM), based on technical and stability parameters of the tunnel, different support systems are specified. By considering the economics and performance indices of each support system, a decision tree based on AHP model is then generated and hence the optimum support system is selected. To apply the model in practice, the method is used in Tabas collieries of Iran. It is concluded that the proposed support system determination is advantageous to the other alternatives. The proposed approach can assist the mining engineer in selection of optimum tunnel support system in different underground mines.