How Do You Check Your Credit Score?- Experian - Experian (2024)

In this article:

  • How to Check Your Credit Scores
  • What Do Credit Scores Mean?
  • What Factors Affect My Credit Scores?
  • Does Checking Your Credit Score Lower It?

There are many ways to check your credit for free, and knowing where you stand could help you estimate whether you can qualify for a new loan or credit card. However, you'll want to pay close attention to which credit score you receive, understand what the score means and why the score you checked might be different from the one a lender uses to evaluate your application.

How to Check Your Credit Scores

You can check your credit scores from various sources, often for free. Depending on the source, you might receive a credit score from either FICO or VantageScore®. Both credit scoring companies calculate several versions of their credit scores, and the scores can be based on your credit report from either Experian, TransUnion or Equifax.

FICO and VantageScore each maintain lists of where you can get one of your credit scores for free—there are hundreds of options. But most fall into one of the following categories.

1. Check With the Major Credit Bureaus

The major credit bureaus might offer you a free copy of your credit report and a free or paid credit score based on the report. With Experian, you can get your credit report and FICO® Score☉ 8 for free. An Experian account also comes with free credit report and score tracking, so you can get notified of changes in your credit report and track your score over time. You'll also receive tips for improving your credit score.

2. Use a Free Credit Score Website

Some websites offer a free credit score to their users as an incentive for creating an account. The type of score and underlying report can vary from one website to the next, as can the insights that the website offers about your score. Sometimes, the websites offer paid subscriptions with additional features or show users loan or credit card offers.

3. Check With Your Credit Card Issuer or Lender

Many credit card issuers and lenders give current cardholders and borrowers a free credit score. The score often gets updated with your monthly statement and it might be the same one that the company uses to evaluate new applicants and current customers. Find out if any of your current creditors offer this as a free service and whether you automatically get your credit score each month or have to sign up for the free credit score program.

4. Visit a Nonprofit Credit Counselor

If you have questions about your credit, budgeting, buying a home, bankruptcy or managing your credit card debt, consider a free meeting with a nonprofit credit counselor. Credit counseling agencies can help with various financial questions or problems, and a counselor can help you check your credit score and explain how to improve your credit.

What Are the Credit Score Ranges?

Most credit scores range from 300 to 850. Improving your credit score can help you qualify for more financial products, lower interest rates and fewer fees. Many creditors also break down the credit score range into smaller groups.

Although creditors can choose their own definitions or ranges for these groups, FICO and VantageScore offer their own benchmarks you can use to understand where you fall. For example, a good credit score could be a FICO® Score from 670 to 739 or a VantageScore from 661 to 780.

How Do You Check Your Credit Score?- Experian - Experian (1)
How Do You Check Your Credit Score?- Experian - Experian (2)

What Do Credit Scores Mean?

Credit scores help organizations quickly assess the risk that someone they lend money to won't repay the loan. Most credit scores are designed to rank people based on the likelihood that they'll miss a payment by at least 90 days within the next 24 months. The higher someone's score, the less statistically likely they are to miss a payment.

Having a high credit score can help you qualify for the best offers and terms because lenders know they're less likely to lose money. Conversely, if you have a low credit score, you might have to pay high interest and fees. Or, you might not be able to qualify at all.

What Factors Affect My Credit Scores?

Most credit scores only consider information from one of your credit reports to determine your score. But the scores use complex calculations, and the impact of each new data point depends on the rest of the information included in your credit profile. In other words, it's impossible to say that a specific action will have the same credit impact for everyone.

There are, however, general categories of what affects your scores. You can order these from most to least important based on how the factors within each category tend to affect your score. These factors are ranked as follows:

1. Payment History

Your payment history is virtually always the most important factor in your credit scores. On the positive side, paying bills on time can improve your credit. On the other hand, late or missed payments, collection accounts and filing for bankruptcy can drastically hurt your scores.

2. Amount of Debit

The number of accounts you have with balances and your progress repaying loans also have a large impact on your credit scores. One of the most important factors within this category is your revolving credit utilization ratio, which measures how much of your credit limit you're using on your credit cards. A low utilization ratio is best for your scores.

3. Length of Credit History

The age of the oldest and newest accounts in your credit report, and the average age of all your accounts, can also affect your scores. Generally, the longer you've used credit, the higher your scores.

4. New Credit

Opening new accounts and applying for credit, indicated by a hard inquiry in your credit report, can also affect your scores. In general, a hard inquiry might hurt your scores a little. This category doesn't have a major impact on your scores, and opening new credit accounts is often a necessary step for building good credit over time.

5. Credit Mix

Having open revolving and installment credit accounts shows that you can manage multiple types of credit, which might help your credit scores. This also isn't a major scoring factor, however, and you shouldn't open new credit accounts with the sole purpose of improving your credit mix.

Why Your Credit Scores May Differ Across the Credit Bureaus

You might see different results if you check your credit scores with several services—it's not an error, and one score isn't more "real" than another. What might be happening is that the services offer different types of credit scores. For example, Your VantageScore and FICO® Scores tend to differ from one another. Both companies also create several versions of their credit scores.

Another reason you'll see different scores is that the services use different credit reports. For instance, you receive your FICO® Score 8 from Experian for free, and that score depends on what's in your Experian credit report. However, a FICO® Score 8 based on your TransUnion or Equifax credit reports will likely be different. And even if the scoring models are nearly identical, there could be minor differences in your credit reports.

Score differences can happen when you have a credit card or loan that only gets reported to one of the bureaus. Or when you apply for a new credit account and the creditor only checks one of your credit reports, leading to a new hard inquiry in that report. Since the other two reports don't have the account or hard inquiry, different scores will likely result.

How to Get Your FICO® Score for Free

Understand the reasons that help or hurt your FICO® Score, including your payment history, how much credit you are using, as well as other factors that influence your overall credit.

Get Your FICO® Score

Does Checking Your Credit Score Lower It?

Checking your credit report and scores never affects your credit scores. When you check your credit, a record of the request gets added to the credit report. However, it's recorded as a soft inquiry. And, unlike hard inquiries, soft inquiries don't affect your credit scores.

Monitor Your Credit Score for Free

Experian's free account includes your credit report and FICO® Score, and you receive ongoing credit score monitoring, so you can see how your score changes over time. You can also receive insights into the factors that are affecting your credit score the most and get tips on how to improve your score.

How Do You Check Your Credit Score?- Experian - Experian (2024)

FAQs

How Do You Check Your Credit Score?- Experian - Experian? ›

Visit Experian's website and click on "Check your FICO® Score for free." You'll then provide the last four digits of your Social Security number and your phone number. Verify your personal details. You'll receive a confirmation link in a text message.

How do I find out my credit score? ›

There are a few main ways to get your credit scores.
  1. Check your credit card or other loan statement. Many major credit card companies and other lenders provide credit scores for their customers. ...
  2. Talk to a nonprofit counselor. ...
  3. Use a credit score service.
Oct 19, 2023

Is Experian your real credit score? ›

Is Experian the Most Accurate Credit Score? Credit scores from the three main bureaus (Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion) are considered accurate.

What is a good Experian score? ›

For a score with a range between 300 and 850, a credit score of 700 or above is generally considered good. A score of 800 or above on the same range is considered to be excellent. Most consumers have credit scores that fall between 600 and 750.

How many times can I check my credit score on Experian? ›

How Often Can You Check Your Credit Score? You can check your credit score as often as you want without hurting your credit, and it's a good idea to do so regularly. At the very minimum, it's a good idea to check before applying for credit, whether it's a home loan, auto loan, credit card or something else.

How can I check my credit score by myself? ›

You can access your personal credit report on the My Credit Check portal. The My Credit Check portal is available at www.mycreditcheck.co.za. You may also chat to ED our chatbot who can assist you.

How can I check my credit score at home? ›

You may access your credit report online for free with Equifax and TransUnion. Accessing your credit report online allows you to see it right away. Other companies may also offer to provide your credit report for free. Equifax allows you to access your credit report online and updates it monthly.

Where is my credit score on Experian? ›

Visit Experian's website and click on "Check your FICO® Score for free." You'll then provide the last four digits of your Social Security number and your phone number. Verify your personal details. You'll receive a confirmation link in a text message.

Does it hurt your credit score to check it on Experian? ›

When you check your own credit report or request your own credit score, or when a monitoring service you authorize does so, that request is noted on your credit report as a soft inquiry. A soft inquiry never has any impact on your credit scores.

What credit score do you start with? ›

Instead of starting from the bottom, you'll actually start with no credit score instead — and that's not as bad as you might think. Implementing the behaviors to establish good credit is essential to what credit score you start with, but that's after meeting the criteria to get past the no credit history phase.

How much can I borrow with a 700 credit score? ›

You can borrow from $1,000 to $100,000 or more with a 700 credit score. The exact amount of money you will get depends on other factors besides your credit score, such as your income, your employment status, the type of loan you get, and even the lender.

What's the difference between my FICO score and my credit score? ›

Is "credit score" the same as "FICO® score"? Basically, "credit score" and "FICO® score" are all referring to the same thing. A FICO® score is a type of credit scoring model. While different reporting agencies may weigh factors slightly differently, they are all essentially measuring the same thing.

What is a good credit score by age? ›

How Credit Scores Breakdown by Generation
Average FICO 8 Score by Generation
Generation20222023
Generation Z (ages 18-26)679 - Good680 - Good
Millennials (27-42)687 - Good690 - Good
Generation X (43-58)707 - Good709 - Good
2 more rows

Why is my credit score going down when I pay on time? ›

Using more of your credit card balance than usual — even if you pay on time — can reduce your score until a new, lower balance is reported the following month. Closed accounts and lower credit limits can also result in lower scores even if your payment behavior has not changed.

Does paying in cash improve your credit score? ›

Embracing cash spending can help with budgeting and money management, but it can hurt your FICO® Score if it means avoiding credit of all types. As interest rates rise and more businesses charge a fee for using credit cards, more people are opting to tuck their credit cards away and embrace a cash-only lifestyle.

Why doesn't my credit score go up after paying off debt? ›

Paying off debt might lower your credit scores if removing the debt affects certain factors like your credit mix, the length of your credit history or your credit utilization ratio. While in some cases your credit scores may dip slightly from paying off debt, that doesn't mean you should ever ignore what you owe.

How to check your credit score without hurting it? ›

A soft credit inquiry, also called a soft credit check or soft pull, is usually done by you or another authorized person, like an employer. Soft credit inquiries don't affect your credit score because you're not actually applying for credit, and these types of inquiries don't necessarily require your permission.

How do you check your credit score properly? ›

Check With Your Credit Card Issuer or Lender

Many credit card issuers and lenders give current cardholders and borrowers a free credit score. The score often gets updated with your monthly statement and it might be the same one that the company uses to evaluate new applicants and current customers.

What is a good credit score for my age? ›

What is a good credit score for your age? You might consider your score to be good if it meets or exceeds the average for your peers, but that isn't the best gauge. Following NerdWallet's general guidelines, a good credit score is within the 690 to 719 range on the standard 300-850 scale, regardless of age.

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