Credit Advice

There are dozens of credit scores used by various lenders, credit bureaus, and credit monitoring services. The common thread of all the credit scores is that they are created from your credit report using the same mathematical process. This common thread also makes all credit scores highly correlated meaning they all move in the same ways. Even FICO, which consumers mistakenly believe to be the only credit score, has different versions of credit scores developed for different purposes and lenders.

Credit scores also vary by the credit bureau used, and the time the score was pulled. Different credit bureaus often have slightly different data on each consumer resulting in different credit scores. Time is also an important consideration when comparing credit scores. Over any given 90 day period, more than 60% of credit scores change as additional payment and credit information is report to the credit bureaus. Credit reports can change almost at anytime, and so do credit scores.

With all of these changing variables, understanding credit scores can be quite a difficult task. That is why we created Credit Karma with a single credit score that you can monitor over time. So our advice is to not compare different scores from different sources. The important thing is monitoring how a consistent scores changes with your daily life, e.g. as you apply for credit cards, or pay down debt.