How to Check Your Credit Score for Free

You can check your credit score for free in less than two minutes on WalletHub, the first site with free daily credit score updates. Just quickly confirm your identity, and you’ll get access to your latest credit score, based on your TransUnion credit report. You’ll then be able to check your score for free at any time, on any device – including your smart phone and tablet.

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Key Things to Know About Checking Your Credit Score

• There are many places to check your credit score for free these days, from free credit score websites to credit card company apps.
• It’s important to check your credit score so you can understand your current financial situation and get a sense of which financial products you may qualify for.
• While WalletHub updates your credit score daily, most other services update less frequently, refreshing your credit score weekly or monthly.
• To get access to your credit score, you will need to confirm your identity by providing information like your full name, Social Security number, and current or previous addresses.
• WalletHub is the best place to check your credit score, as you can do it for free in under two minutes and your credit score is updated daily. You also get access to features such as a personalized credit analysis, a credit score simulator, credit monitoring, and a credit improvement plan, to help you manage your credit score and take it to the next level.

How to Check Your Credit Score on WalletHub

1. Sign up for a free WalletHub account.

Go to Wallethub.com/join to sign up for an account. Then you will have to enter your personal information, such as your email address and Social Security number, to verify your identity

2. Log into your account.

When your account is set up, log in with the email address you signed up with and your password.

3. Go to your account dashboard.

Once you’re logged in, you can click on “MyHub” and see your credit score on the “Main Dashboard.”

WalletHub is not the only place where you can check your credit score. However, there are many benefits to checking your credit score on WalletHub. In addition to being able to see daily updates to your credit score, you can see your full credit report for free and get a personalized credit analysis, a credit improvement plan, and free 24/7 credit monitoring. You can see where else you can check your credit score below.

Where You Can Check Your Credit Score 

Note: Some of the free services also have paid plans that come with added features, such as dark web monitoring and identity theft insurance.

For more information about where you can get your credit score, check out our complete list of the best credit score sites.

Why You Should Check Your Credit Score

It’s always good to brush up on the benefits of checking your credit score. And in short, checking your credit is important because it:

• Gives you a good sense of your financial fitness, providing a numerical grade for the contents of your credit reports.
• Helps you get the best possible credit card and loan terms, and reduces the likelihood of rejection.
• Makes comparing financial products easier, as most offers list a minimum level of credit (e.g., Excellent, Good, Bad) needed to qualify.
• Tells you how closely you need to review your credit reports. A score that is much lower than you’d expect is an obvious red flag, perhaps indicating potential fraud.
• Has no effect on your credit score. Checking your credit score creates a soft inquiry, which does not impact your credit score, so you can (and should) check your score as often as you want.

Finally, it’s important to remember that virtually everyone has room for credit-score improvement. And a better credit score could be worth thousands of dollars per year. Plus, tending to your score doesn’t have to cost you a dime or much time. So check out our handy credit-improvement tips to get started. And if you’d like advice tailored to your specific situation, sign up for a free WalletHub account to get your personalized credit analysis. That’s just another reason why you should check your credit score on WalletHub.

Which Credit Score Should You Check?

Most people don’t know it, but we each have many different credit scores — more than 1,000, according to some estimates. But the truth is, it doesn’t really matter which one you check, as long as it’s free and from a reputable source.

There are a couple of important reasons for that:

1. Similar Results: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found a 90% correlation among a selection of the most common credit-score models. So if you get credit scores from two different providers, the numbers are likely to be extremely close, if not identical. In addition to differences between scoring models, credit scores can differ because not all lenders report to all three major credit bureaus.
2. Hard to Get a Lender’s Exact Score: It’s often impossible to predict exactly what type of credit score a lender will use, especially since many lenders customize over-the-counter credit score models to suit their particular needs. And if you can’t get the specific type of score your lender of choice is going to use to evaluate your application, there’s really no reason to be picky.

You can learn more about the variety of scores and models from our article on why there is no “real” credit score. For what it’s worth, WalletHub’s free credit scores are based on the VantageScore 3.0 model. VantageScore 3.0 is one of the most popular types of credit scores among lenders, and it is among the most predictive credit scores available.

Ask the Experts: Credit-Checking Tips

Checking your credit score is easier than ever. But people still don’t do it enough. Why? We posed the following questions to a panel of personal finance experts to find out as well as to get tips for saving money while staying on top of your score. You can see what they said below.

• How much easier is it for people to check their credit scores now than it was 5-10 years ago?
• Is there ever a reason to pay to check your credit score?
• Which benefits a consumer more: daily credit score updates based on one bureau’s credit reports or weekly updates based on two bureaus’ reports?
• What is the biggest mistake that people make in regards to checking their credit scores?

Ask the Experts

Stephanie Wendling
CPA, CFP®, MSTFP, Instructor of Taxation and Financial Planning, Widener University
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Fabio Gaertner
Associate Professor, Department of Accounting and Information Systems-Wisconsin School of Business
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Carole Makela
Professor, Family and Consumer Sciences Education, Colorado State University-College of Health and Human Sciences
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Mitchell Franklin
Ph.D., CPA, Associate Professor of Accounting, Le Moyne College Madden School of Business
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Blake T. Gray
Ph.D., CFP®, Assistant Professor, Personal Financial Planning, Kansas State University and Faculty Consultant, K-State Financial Well-being Initiative
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Jack Popovich
Associate Professor of Finance and Program Coordinator for Finance and Real Estate at Columbus State Community College
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