Check Your Score First — Tickle & Compass

Money tip 01

Checking your score is free.

Equifax and TransUnion will show you your own number as often as you want — and it won't cost you a single point.

Two kinds of inquiry

SOFT PULL

Checking your own score, or a lender pre-qualifying you, is a soft inquiry. It never affects your score, no matter how many times you look.

HARD PULL

Actually applying for a card, loan, or mortgage triggers a hard inquiry — the kind that can knock off a few points and stays on your file for years.

Rule one

Check it before a lender does.

Look at your own score before applying for anything big — a mortgage, a car loan, a new card — so a low number doesn't surprise you at the worst possible moment.

Rule two

Your file isn't identical at both bureaus.

Equifax and TransUnion track your credit separately, and lenders don't always pull the same one. A score that looks fine at one can be missing history at the other — check both, not just whichever app you downloaded first.

Worth doing regularly

It's also how you catch fraud early.

An account or address you don't recognize on your report is often the first sign someone else opened credit in your name. Regular free checks make that visible before it becomes a bigger problem.

One exception

Rate-shopping doesn't multiply the damage.

Several hard inquiries for the same type of loan — say, comparing mortgage rates across lenders — within a short window are usually bundled and scored as a single inquiry, not several.

Tickle & Compass

Save this, then check your number.

Free credit score monitoring is one of the easiest habits in the "Credit & borrowing" section of our full breakdown.

See the full breakdown →

General information, not financial advice for your specific situation.