Is FreeCreditCheck.com safe?
FreeCreditCheck.com is a site that provides consumers with their credit scores from the three credit bureaus: TransUnion, Equifax and Experian. If you are looking for a free credit score, FreeCreditCheck.com is one of many options.
What is FreeCreditCheck.com?
FreeCreditCheck.com is a website run by One Technologies, LLC.
The site offers free credit checks to consumers.
To get a free credit check through the site, you need to sign up for the ScoreSense service.
The free version of ScoreSense provides you with one free credit score. For a monthly fee, you can get your credit score from all three credit bureaus (see below).
Despite there being a lot of online scams on the internet, FreeCreditCheck.com is legit.
What are the three credit monitoring bureaus?
There are three credit monitoring companies: TransUnion, Equifax and Experian.
What are some good alternatives to FreeCreditCheck.com?
Here are some sites that also offer free credit checks and scores.
AnnualCreditReport.com
By law, TransUnion, Equifax and Experian are required to provide you with free access to your full credit report once a year. The place that you go to access these free credit reports is AnnualCreditReport.com.
Credit reports accessed through AnnualCreditReport.com are completely free. But you should expect that the credit bureaus will try to sell you something (most likely paid credit monitoring) while you are on their site checking your report.
We should note that AnnualCreditReport.com only provides you with access to your credit report. It does not provide you with your FICO score.
Credit Karma
Credit Karma has become one of the most popular credit monitoring sites on the internet.
It not only offers you the ability to check your credit score, for free, but it also provides free tax preparation software, calculators and suggestions for credit cards and bank accounts.
Credit Karma provides your credit score from two of the three credit bureaus: TransUnion and Equifax.
Credit Sesame
Credit Sesame is very similar to Credit Karma. You can sign up for a free account and get access to your credit score. The site checks your credit score monthly, so you can check back in periodically to see the changes in your score.
Credit Sesame offers four different subscription tiers: Free, Advanced (for $9.95 per month), Pro (for $15.95 per month) and Platinum (for $19.95 per month).
CreditWise from Capital One
CreditWise, offered by Capital One bank, lets you check your TransUnion credit report. It's available to you even if you are not a current Capital One bank customer.
Through CreditWise, you can register to receive email or app notifications whenever your credit score changes. It also provides a tool that can tell you how your credit score will be affected if you take certain actions, like applying for a new credit card or miss a payment.
Why is my credit report so important?
Any time that you apply for credit, like a credit card or a loan, your lender will check your credit report. In addition, if you are trying to rent an apartment, or applying for a new job, your potential future landlord or employer could check your credit report to try to decide if you would make a good tenant/employee.
If you have a relatively clean credit report, which shows a history of on-time payments and no defaults, you will likely receive a better interest rate from your lender.
Basically, your credit report is a way that a lender/landlord/employer measures how risky a borrower/tenant/employee you might be.