When
I last applied for a credit card, I received multiple e-mails within minutes
alerting me that someone had checked my credit report. This was reassuring, and yet
I dont pay any money to a credit monitoring service. This is my custom-made suite
of free credit monitoring that covers all three major credit bureaus.
The government requires the credit bureaus to provide you a free credit report at least once every 12 months (right now weekly due to the pandemic). However, the services listed below provide you a free credit score updated throughout the year either daily, weekly, or monthly. The best ones also offer free continuous daily credit monitoring and/or free identity protection services. As of 2022, all three major credit bureaus are covered: TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian.
None of the services below require a trial or credit card number to sign up, so you dont have to worry about any surprise charges. These are either ad-supported (they will pitch you stuff) and/or they are freemium services with a paid upgrade option (but you can stay on the free tier forever). Each of them offers something unique, and together form a comprehensive daily monitoring of your credit.
CreditKarma.com offers you two free credit scores, based on your TransUnion and Equifax credit reports and updated weekly (VantageScore). Score range is 300-850. They only require the last 4 digits of your Social Security Number. No trial or credit card required. The best part about Credit Karma is that you get two credit bureaus covered in one service.
- Free credit monitoring. Credit Karma also offers free e-mail credit monitoring alerts of your TransUnion data.
- Free identity theft monitoring. Credit Karma uses your email address to search and notify you of breached accounts and threats to your identity.
CreditSesame.com offers a free credit score every month, based on your TransUnion credit report (VantageScore 3.0). Score range is 300-850. They only require the last 4 digits of your Social Security Number. No trial or credit card required. The best part about Credit Sesame is that they include free $50,000 in ID theft insurance and live assistance.
- Free daily credit monitoring. Credit Sesame offers free daily credit monitoring of your TransUnion data, with alerts coming via e-mail, text, or smartphone app.
- Free identity protection and restoration services. Credit Sesame also includes $50,000 in identity theft insurance and live access to talk to identity restoration specialists in their free membership level.
Experian.com now offers a free credit score every 30 days, based on your Experian credit report (FICO 08). Score range is 300-850. They require your full Social Security Number. No trial or credit card required. They dont have ads, but will bug you to upgrade to their paid tier. They are also the only free option to track changes to your Experian report, which rounds out the two above. Separately, you can also opt-in to Experian Boost to improve your score (see below).
- Free daily credit monitoring. They also offer free e-mail credit monitoring alerts of your Experian data.
- Improve your credit score by adding utility payments. See that Boosted icon on the top left of the credit score screenshot? Experian Boost is a free option that can potentially improve your Experian-based credit score by adding on-time utility and phone bill payments. See my Experian Boost review.
WalletHub
WalletHub.com offers a free credit score based on your TransUnion credit report (VantageScore), updated daily. Score range is 300-850. They only require the last 4 digits of your Social Security Number. No trial or credit card required. The best part about WalletHub is that they offer daily access to your full TransUnion credit report, if for some reason you want to check your full report that often (actively repairing credit, ID theft restoration, etc).
Note that some of the scores above are not FICO scores because Fair Isaac charges more money in licensing fees and these companies may not be able to cover those costs with their advertising. If you really want a FICO number, nearly every major credit card issuer now includes a monthly FICO score with their cards: Chase, Citi, Bank of America, Discover, Barclaycard, and American Express.
However, these services are best at alerting you to why your credit changed. I enjoy getting an email if a credit card balance is paid in full, if there is a new credit inquiry, or if my credit balance-to-limit utilization ratio gets too high on a specific credit line. This is also a great way to get early warning of any fraudulent activity.
Bottom line. Used in combination, I use the services above to keep track of changes to my credit reports across all three credit bureaus for free. None of them require my credit card number, and they quickly alert me to things like new accounts, new credit check inquiries, and high credit line usage.
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From what I can tell Credit Sesame upped their free identity theft insurance coverage to $1M. Given that I get bombarded with emails from all sorts of companies (eh hem, Discover) trying to sell me identity theft monitoring and insurance this doesn’t seem like a completely trivial benefit to opt yourself in to.
A lot of people arent aware that there are different versions of FICO scores depending on what youre trying to do. Scores from mortgage lenders can differ a lot from scores from auto lenders, for example. And these free services dont even offer FICO scores (except Experian, which only gives you FICO 8). I still use Credit Karma, but the more I compare it against my actual FICO scores the less faith I have in it. Some of my FICO scores are currently 50-60 points off from the Vantage score that Credit Karma uses. I hate paying for things, but Ive finally started just paying for my FICO score when I need one.
Ive got all of the above plus the free services from Discover, Mastercard ID Protection Online, and Capital One Credit Wise. Ive also got Aura Identity Guard which I seem to get perpetual free renewals because of ongoing data breaches.
Aura seems to be the best and notifies me every time there is a soft pull, hard pull or even a background check, etc. Mastercard is a close second and Capital One a close third. Between the seven free service I typically get 2-3 notifications as well as Aura. I dont think there has been a time where Ive only gotten the Aura notification and none of the others.