A few places to check your Credit Score for free

[bjl584]

DON'T PAY FOR YOUR CREDIT SCORE!!! There is no reason to pay - you can get it for free.

Here are three websites where you can check your credit score for free.

Good credit is important for a number of reasons...cheaper borrowing costs, getting approval for rental housing, better utility rates, and in some cases jobs.

Credit Karma
Annual Credit Report
Credit Sesame

[kork13]

Many credit cards are now offering you free access to a credit score. Discover, Citi, AMEX, just to name the few I've got. Some banks are also offering it for free.

Caveat emptor -- they don't all provide you with the "real" FICO Score that lenders use (goes up to 850), but often a Vantage Score (goes up to 900), or some other variety of rating.

That said, they all populate from largely the same information, and all you really need to know is the range that your credit is sitting in. Great, good, average, low, bad... Any of the above flavors of credit score can provide you with that knowledge, and you can tell by that range of you'll get disapproved got new credit (bad score), conditional or minimal approval with very high interest rates (low score), approved with average-to-high interest rates (average score), approved with decent rates & good limits (good score), or approved with competitive rates & as much access to debt as you want (great score).

The point of your credit score is simply to serve as an easy way for lenders to judge how eagerly & deeply they'll trust your management of debt. If recommend against focusing on building your credit score... Just handle your obligations appropriately & the score will handle itself over time. There's very little you can do to dramatically improve your score in less than a year or three.

[james.hendrickson]

So, that is all correct Kork. The forums gets a good amount of lurkers and casual passers by. My only thinking here is: people should know they don't have to pay to get their credit score. There are still some companies that build a business around charging people for it.

[Stormila]

Hmm, interesting. as far as I know, the credit rating is not global. that is, having a good credit rating in the US, then you will not have a good credit rating in other countries. so I wonder if this site will only help US residents or not. so residents of other countries will have to continue paying for information about their credit rating. a friend of mine is trying to increase his credit rating in Estonia with the help of Bondora, and he often has to contact agencies that are engaged in calculating your credit rating for a fee. It is a pity that it is not possible to check your credit rating for free all over the world.