How can one get their FICO/credit scores for free? (really free)

Question

TV and the web are filled with ads promising to give you a free copy of your credit report. Unfortunately, instead of being wholly free, they are actually free trials, which means:

1. You only get them for free once
2. You have to enter a credit card number
3. You have to opt out of a bunch of crap services you don't need
4. You must remember to cancel the service before the trial period is up

All of which is huge pain in the rear. Is there any truly free way that you can use to determine your credit score?

If not, I've heard you can send a letter the the 3 major credit bureaus asking for your reports and get them via the postal service. Taking this route:

1. What addresses need one send letters to?
2. What should one's letter contain?
3. Should a self-addressed, stamped envelope be included?

Answer 1

As of 2014, this answer is deprecated. Read answer here for recent developments up to January 2015.

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You can get a free credit report yearly, but you don't get your credit score, just the content of your report. This is useful to make sure your credit history is correct, etc. To get that, visit annualcreditreport.com.

Another site which will give you your score for free, really free with no strings attached, is creditkarma.com, which gives you your TransUnion credit score and full TransUnion credit report. The site is run by TransUnion and supported via advertising. At this point Equifax and Experian offer similar services via subscription, but not for free.

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Update 8/14/2015:

CreditKarma now offers the Equifax information as part of their service.

Answer 2

I get my credit scores from all three bureaus for free - no gimmick. I use a combination of banks that offer this service to get my scores. I wrote about this sometime back in my blog. For credit report, the only place to go is AnnualCreditReport.com. I space it out so that I get one every 4 months since there is a once a year restriction per bureau.

Answer 3

1/8/2010 Trip Report for AnnualCreditReport.com

I visited annualcreditreport.com to get my annual credit report. It is only the report, not the score or FICO score. This is the only outlet I know of that allows you to get your report for free, without a bunch of strings attached or crap to sign up for and cancel later.

1. It was very easy. I was wary of putting in my private information, but how else can they possibly pull you up?

2. Read the instructions carefully. You go to each bureau to fetch your report, and they dutifully give you a free report, but they push hard to try and sell you a score or a report service. It is easy to avoid these if you read carefully.

3. Once you get a report, you have print it out or you can't see it again for another year. Each bureau has a different site, with different rules, and different identity checks to get in. Again, read the instructions and it isn't hard.

4. Instead of printing, I just saved the page as HTML. You get one html file and a folder with all the images and other stuff. This suits me but you might like to print.

5. After you get each report, you have to click a link to back to the annualcreditreport.com site. From there you go to the next bureau.

Regarding a score. Everybody does it differently. Free Issac does FICO, but anybody who pulls your credit can generate a score however they like, so getting a score isn't anywhere near as important as making sure your report is accurate.

You can use credit.com to simulate a score from one of the bureaus (I can't easily see which one at the moment). It is as easy as annualcreditreport.com and I have no issue getting a simulated score and report card.

Answer 4

I've seen credit cards that provide you your credit score for free, updated once a month and even charted over the last year. Unfortunately the bank I used to have this card with was bought and the purchasing bank discontinued the feature.

Perhaps someone out there knows of some cards that still offer a feature like this?

Answer 5

It appears that you already know this, but FICO credit scores (as controlled by Fair Isaac Corporation) are the real official credit scores, and FICO takes a cut on their production no matter which of the 3 major credit bureaus calculates the official score (all using slightly different methods). Be careful when obtaining a score for making a big decision that it is a FICO score, because relatively few lenders will lend based on a non-FICO score.

That said, some non-FICO scores are easy to obtain and can be roughly translated to an approximation of your score. Barclays US/ Juniper Bank credit cards offer a free Transunion "TransRisk"(TM) score. The TransRisk score is a 900 point scale, while the FICO score is an 850 point scale. This is a simple ratio and you can calculate your approximate FICO score by the formula:

850 * TRscore / 900 ~= something near Transunions version of your FICO score.

Answer 6

Check with your bank.

As of January, 2015, the following banks and credit unions are offering free credit-scores:

• Barclaycard US
• First Bankcard (the credit card business of First National Bank of Omaha)
• Citibank (C),
• Discover (DFS),
• Digital Credit Union,
• the Pentagon Federal Credit Union, and
• North Carolina's State Employees' Credit Union

Announced, in the pipeline:

• JPMorgan Chase (JPM)
• Bank of America

Source: Banks to offer FICO credit scores for free

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Personal Experience: I've been receiving free FICO score from my credit union for more than 6 months now.

Advice: Most people have multiple bank/credit-union accounts. The FICO score will be the same whoever offers it. If none of your financial institutions offer you a free credit-score then you may opt for free services like creditkarma.com or other paid services. None of them are the widely used FICO scores, but they can be a good gauge of your credit standing.

Please note that a credit-score is number summarizing your credit-report and should not be confused.

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In the news:

• FICO Announcement from 2013 - Free FICO credit scores coming to millions - CNN
• Obama's Speech at the Federal Trade Commission as of January, 2015 - An expansion in the number of Americans benefiting from free credit scores - The Washington Post

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Answer 7

Credit Sesame monitors your credit score for free. My understanding is that they make their money off of credit card referrals.