The 8 Best Free Personal &#038; Business Credit Score Sites

Get Started With Dun & Bradstreet

Dun & Bradstreet Credit Signal: Best For Business Credit Scores

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Most of the free credit reports offered on this list are good resources for small business owners who rely on their personal credit ratings for their small business needs. If your business is a bit larger or has a longer history, you may have a business credit rating. While it's not as easy to find free credit checks for business credit, Dun & Bradstreet's Credit Signal is both easy and accessible.

Dun & Bradstreet's free business credit check is somewhat limited, however. With the free version, you can receive notifications whenever there are changes to your D&B PAYDEX, Delinquency Predictor Score, Financial Stress Score, and Supplier Evaluation Risk Rating. You won't be able to see your full business credit report unless you upgrade to CreditSignal Plus at $15/month. Compared to other paid plans that let you see your business credit score, that's a bargain.

Get Started With Discover Credit Scorecard

Discover Credit Scorecard: Best For Discover Card Customers

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Until recently, Discover offered free credit scores to all consumers, regardless of whether or not they were Discover customers. Unfortunately, as of June 2022, this service is limited to primary Discover cardholders only. Discover is one of the only services to provide a free FICO score -- most free credit score services provide your VantageScore. Discover's FICO score is derived from Equifax, and it's updated monthly.

Be aware, however, that because FICO offers several scores, the score shown on your Discover Credit Scorecard might not be the same score that your creditors are using. However, it might still be worth a look for educational and general credit monitoring purposes.

Get Started With WalletHub

WalletHub: Best For Finance Tools

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WalletHub offers a free credit score and credit report from TransUnion (VantageScore), including daily updates. When you log in to WalletHub, you'll see your credit score front and center. You'll also see information about your loans, lines of credit, and collection accounts as well as personal data, such as your name and address, and anything available from public records, including information about bankruptcy and child support.

In addition to your credit score, WalletHub offers other useful services to improve your credit and financials. Customers receive free monitoring of their TransUnion account as well as services such as customized advice to improve credit, credit card recommendations, and savings alerts. You can also access financial calculators to help you learn about student loan payments, mortgage payoffs, the true costs of homeownership, credit card interest rates, and more.

You can download the WalletHub mobile app for iOS and Android to have access to your credit score on the go. You can also access real-time notifications regarding your credit score.

Get Started With Chase Credit Journey

Chase Credit Journey: Best For Prequalified Offers

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Chase offers TransUnion scores and reports via Credit Journey. This service is free and available to all consumers, not just Chase customers. Scores update weekly. You can opt to receive notifications when new credit inquiries or a new account opens, if your address or account status changes, if any fraud alerts or delinquent account notices are released, or if new public records are reported for you.

Chase also tracks your score over time and has a credit score simulator that shows how your score might change if you take certain actions. You can use the tool to simulate the effect on your credit score if changes occur in your credit usage, your number of balances, your payment history, and more.

You'll also be shown what Chase credit cards you are prequalified for. This is a good way to explore your credit options without initiating a hard pull on your credit.

Get Started With Experian

Experian Credit Report: Best For Multiple Scores

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Experian's free credit check gives you access to your scores from all three major credit bureaus: TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian. That gives you a more complete view of your creditworthiness. Experian updates its report monthly. You can also sign up for credit monitoring, for a fee, if you're interested, and you'll receive alerts of changes or suspicious activity that could impact your credit score.

Even if you don't want to shell out $24.95+/month for credit monitoring, you can sign up for basic alerts and a free Dark Web scan. Experian offers free customer support and has a mobile app to make it easy to stay on top of your credit score.

Get Started With Credit Sesame

Credit Sesame: Best For Building Credit

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Credit Sesame offers not just free credit checks but also paid services that let users monitor and grow their credit. You can use Credit Sesame to access your TransUnion credit score each day and take advantage of free credit monitoring and transaction alerts.

You can also use Credit Sesame to build or repair your credit. Sesame Cash is a prepaid debit card issued in partnership with Community Federal Savings Bank. Use Sesame Credit to open a virtual secured credit card account. Your credit limit with this card will be equal to the amount you deposit in your Sesame Cash account. Transactions made using your secured card will be reported to the major credit bureaus, and as you make timely payments of your balance, your credit rating can improve. You can even get cash back and other rewards with your Sesame Card purchases.

Credit Sesame also offers paid plans, if you're interested in gaining more, including access to your scores from all three major credit bureaus.

Nav Business Credit Reports: Best For Credit-Building Tools

Nav	Visit Site

Nav business credit reports provide business owners with a summary of their business credit reports from Dun & Bradstreet, Experian, and Equifax as well as their own personal credit scores. Unfortunately, if you want to see your full credit reports and scores, you'll need to upgrade to a paid version, which costs $49.99 per month.

With the free summary only, you'll be able to receive 24/7 business and personal credit alerts. You'll also be able to see cash flow alerts and insights and connect one-on-one with credit and lending specialists. Nav offers users resources and tips that can help establish and grow business credit. Unlike other resources on this list, Nav focuses on building your business credit rather than your personal credit rating.

Get Started With Nav

What Is A Credit Score?

Credit scores are numbers that represent your creditworthiness. As your small business grows and spends, the business may develop a credit profile that’s separate from yours. Although we’ll talk a little bit below about how to check your business credit profile, most small business owners will have to rely on their personal credit scores when seeking credit for their small business.

What's Considered A Good Credit Score?

Your credit score indicates how likely you are to pay on time in the future. Personal credit scores range anywhere from 300 to 850, while a true business credit score will range from 0 to 100. The higher your score, the better. Every creditor has their own ideas about what’s considered “good” credit, but typically, if you have a personal score above 600, you will have a relatively easy time finding creditors willing to work with you. Keep in mind, the higher your credit, the better rates you’re likely to be offered.

How Credit Scoring Works

Contrary to popular understanding, you don’t have just one credit score; in fact, you have many. Credit scores are derived from your credit report: a history of your past debts, payments, and other information gathered by credit reporting agencies. The three big credit reporting agencies are Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. While all three agencies gather similar information about you, they might not have the same information. You can learn more about the ins and outs of the agencies via our guide to the three major credit bureaus.

A scoring algorithm, usually either VantageScore or FICO, is applied to your credit report to come up with your score. As such, you could see different credit scores, depending on the scoring system and the credit report your information was derived from.

Hard VS Soft Credit Inquiries

There are two types of credit inquiries, hard inquiries (or hard pulls) and soft inquiries (or soft pulls). Lenders who are considering extending credit to you typically initiate a hard inquiry, and that can affect your credit score. Soft inquiries, on the other hand, do not affect your credit score. All of the tools listed here involve soft pulls, and won’t impact your credit score

VantageScore VS FICO

As we said above, many small business owners use their personal credit scores to apply for loans, credit cards, and more. Personal credit scores are derived from your credit report using one of two scoring models: VantageScore and FICO. Although both VantageScore and FICO use scales of 300 to 850, they might return different scores, because they place importance on different factors.

That can be a bit of a problem, since most free credit score services get their data from VantageScore while many creditors will look at your FICO score. If a potential lender pulls your TransUnion FICO score, for example, they will get a different number than the one you receive from your free credit score service.

That said, the difference in scores usually is not significant. If you have a high FICO score, you will also have a high score from VantageScore. Conversely, if you have poor (or inaccurate) marks on your report, they will be reflected by both VantageScore and FICO as a lower score. For general credit score monitoring, either VantageScore or FICO will suit most consumers’ purposes.

When To Use Free Annual Credit Reports

You should know that, by law, Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax are required to issue a free copy of your credit report every 12 months. Consumers who request a free copy of their report will receive a full copy, whereas many free services only offer a limited report. You can use your free annual reports to review the information included in the limited reports and contest any mistakes that you find.

Unfortunately, your annual free credit report does not include any actual credit scores. To access this information, you’ll have to sign up for a free credit score service or pay for your scores.

When To Use Free Credit Score Services

Free score services offer scores derived from one or two agencies and don’t always offer a full credit report. It’s a good idea, then, to also request free copies of your credit reports from AnnualCreditReport.com every year and to contest any mistakes that you have found.

That said, free credit score services are useful for educational purposes and general credit monitoring. Just remember that the specific score shown is unlikely to be the exact score that your creditors see. Still, a free credit score service can give you tools to improve and maintain your credit score. All the services listed above are free, easy to use, and offer useful services in addition to your credit score.

Pros

Useful for credit monitoring
Tools to improve credit score
Free & easy to use

Cons

Not always a full credit report
May not be the exact score your creditors see

If you already know your credit score isn’t where it should be we’ve got you covered. Learn how to improve your business credit score.

What if you have bad credit and know it? That doesn’t mean you can’t get a business credit card or loan. Check out our suggestions for business credit cards for bad credit to get started.

We’ve also got a list of no credit check business loans and bad credit startup loans.

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Jason Vissers

Expert Contributor at Merchant Maverick

Jason has been writing about small business software platforms, services, and financing since 2015. Jason’s expertise has been featured in Yahoo Finance, Time/NextAdvisor, Home Business Magazine, CreditCards.com, GoBankingRates, TheLadders.com, and other publications. He has a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from San Diego State University and currently lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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1. Credit Karma

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Best for daily credit monitoring.

2. Dun & Bradstreet

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Best for business credit scores

3. Discover Credit Scorecard

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Best for Discover Card customers.

4. WalletHub

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Best for finance tools.

5. Chase Credit Journey

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Best for prequalified offers

6. Experian

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Best for multiple scores.

7. Credit Sesame

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Best for building credit.

8. Nav

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Best for credit-building tools.