Getting Credit Scores
Federal law guarantees you a free credit report annually, but not your actual credit score. And since there are different credit bureaus, each one may award you a different credit score. The one you buy your credit score from may not be the same one the credit card company you just applied to will review for approval.
Order your credit report so you can check for and fix errors you may find. Each credit bureau; Equifax, Transunion and Experian, may report differently and have different scores. Use our free credit check to gauge how well you are currently managing your credit.
There are four types of credit report scores, each using different equation formulas. They are:
FICO, which was created by The Fair Isaac Corporation. Your FICO score can range between 300 and 850 and; of course, the higher the number the better your credit score. You can buy your FICO credit score at myFICO.com which is the consumer division of FairIsaac. You can also buy your FICO score based on your Equifax report either from Equifax's Web site or when you request your Equifax report through annualcreditreport.com. The other two credit bureaus; Experian and TransUnion, do not sell FICO scores to consumers. They sell their score calculations only to lenders.
VantageScore; introduced last year by the three credit bureaus as a direct competitor to FICO, can be bought from Experian and Transunion. Your VantageScore can range between 501 and 990 and; once gain, the higher the number the better. VantageScore also assigns a letter grade to your score. Scores from 901-990 get an 'A', and scores 501-600 get an 'F'.
TransUnion's TruCredit score; which can only be obtained through Transunion, can only be bought by purchasing their 3-in-1 credit monitoring service.
Experian's PLUS score; a FICO-like score which can only be obtained through Experian, can only be bought by purchasing other Experian credit products such as its Experian Credit Report and Score.
Now that you know the four types of reports, how do you decide which one to get? Although each uses a different equation to calculate credit scores, all of them give you an idea of where you stand credit-wise.
FICO is the most widely used, especially in the mortgage industry. The use of VantageScore among lenders has been minimal. Transunion's TruCredit and Experian's PLUS are specific only to them.
So, since FICO scores are the only ones you can buy based on each of your credit reports and is the most commonly used, if you're going to buy one and only one of your scores, buy your FICO score.
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