How Often Does Your Credit Score Update & Change?

Your credit score can change daily, as it updates whenever new information is added to your major credit reports. Information being added to your credit report usually coincides with the statement dates of your loans and lines of credit, which is when lenders typically report account information to the credit bureaus. Your credit score will change if you apply for a new loan or line of credit, too.

Key Things to Know About When Your Credit Score Updates

• Your credit score updates when the information in your credit report updates.
• Creditors and lenders decide how often they report information to the credit bureaus, but it’s typically once a month.
• A lot of free credit score websites only update their scores weekly or monthly, so you might not find out about changes right away.
• Since creditors and lenders can report information to the credit bureaus at any time, it’s important to use a service like WalletHub that updates your credit score and report on a daily basis.

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When Do Creditors Report to the Credit Bureaus?

Creditors and lenders usually report information about your account to the credit bureaus once a month, typically when they send you the charges for your most recent billing cycle, also called the statement date. There is no specific date when your credit report will always be updated, however, as creditors and lenders can send information at any time. If you have multiple credit accounts, each creditor may report at a different time.

What Credit Report Information Gets Updated?

Any of the information on your credit report can change when creditors and other data providers report to the credit bureaus. Even an updated name or address can get added to your file. That said, the updates most likely to affect your credit score include:

• Whether you paid your bill on time
• Your updated balance
• Any applications for new credit, such as a new credit card or loan
• Any debts that are turned over to a collection agency
• Any bankruptcy filings

Your credit score will also change when old negative information – such as late payments, collection accounts, and bankruptcy filings – gets removed from your credit report. Marks like these can stay on your credit report for seven to 10 years. The table below gives you a breakdown of exactly how long these items will stay on your credit report.

How Long Negative Information Stays on Your Credit Report

Even though things like credit inquiries and collection accounts will stay on your credit report for a set number of years, they won’t affect your credit score the whole time. For instance, credit inquiries will stay on your credit report for two years, but your FICO credit score will only factor in credit inquiries made in the past 12 months. Likewise, collection accounts can stay on your credit report for up to seven years, but the latest versions of the FICO and VantageScore credit score models ignore paid collection accounts.

Learn more about what affects your credit score.

Why You May Not See Your Latest Credit Score

Just because your credit score changes, however, does not necessarily mean you’ll see the update right away. You may not see your latest score if the service you are using to view your credit score doesn’t update frequently — for example, if it only updates your score once a week or month.

WalletHub is the first site to offer free credit scores (and reports) that are updated on a daily basis. So any new information added to your credit report today will be reflected in the credit score you see on WalletHub tomorrow. This is in contrast to some of the other free credit score sites that update their scores on a monthly or weekly basis at best. So, they might not show your actual current credit score for days. The periodic updates provided by those other credit score sites could cost you money if relied upon exclusively.

Disadvantages of Credit Score Sites With Infrequent Updates:

False Impression of Approval Odds

An old credit score tells you little about your current chances of qualifying for a particular credit card offer or a given loan rate. Lenders and creditors want to see your current payment habits and whether you are responsible with borrowed money. An old credit score won’t offer you much insight on the most current information lenders and creditors have.

Not only is getting turned down for a financial product generally bad for your credit standing, but it also means you’ve wasted a bunch of valuable time and effort. You still will be in need of the financial product you were seeking, and your failed initial attempt might just make the task a bit harder. After all, it’s common for credit scores to dip after applying for a credit card or loan.

Misdiagnosed Performance Issues

When your credit score is being updated only once a week or once a month, it may be difficult to pinpoint what factors throughout the month or week impacted your credit score the most and led to a drop in your credit score, for example. It can even lead you to believe one thing could have been the issue, but when in actuality it was something else.

The more data you have, the less likely you are to draw false conclusions about the activity you’re tracking. When you sign up for a WalletHub account, you can access your daily updated credit score. Also, if your credit score does drop, you can use WalletHub’s Why My Credit Score Changed feature to quickly find out the exact reason.

Missed Signs of Fraud

Fraud indicators are among the most important information that can be overlooked when you check your credit score only in between long intervals. Each day that passes can further obscure the signs, such as a temporary drop in your rating, so that by the time you revisit things, what might have previously stood out like a sore thumb no longer draws your attention.

For example, a new credit inquiry can drop your credit score by less than five points temporarily. It’s no big deal if you are applying for new credit. However, what if this was not you, and instead someone who created a fraudulent credit card account under your name? You may not notice this if the credit score site you’re using is not updating your score daily. You may not even notice until you see a major drop in your credit score for an unpaid balance on an account you never knew you had. This goes to show that what you don’t know about your credit score can certainly cost you money.

To find out where you can see your latest credit score, check out WalletHub’s picks for the best credit score sites.