Credit Karma offers free credit scores to consumers with no strings attached. It is a truly free service: There's nothing to cancel and they don't ask for your credit card number.
The sign up process is painless. I was able to receive my free score in less than two minutes:
As you can see from the screenshot above, the only "catch" is that under your free credit score report, Credit Karma will show you offers from various companies like Road Runner, Upromise, and Discover. You can organize the offers based on ratings from other Credit Karma users (think of it as a Digg for financial product offers). According to USA Today:
Credit Karma provides you with special offers based on your credit score. For example, you can get a lower interest rate on credit cards. You may also apply for offers from cable companies and other businesses.
There are no annoying pop-up ads and Credit Karma claims it will not sell your information to anyone. The ads are not a bad trade for a free credit score. In comparison, FICO's official credit score monitoring service costs $89.95.
If you're not familiar with how credit scores work, the raw numbers might not be very helpful. This is where Credit Karma's comparison charts come in handy:
You can check your credit score for free as many times as you want. Credit Karma will keep track of your scores over time, which can help you identify overall trends in your credit score:
What information do I have to provide?
You have to verify your identity by providing your address, phone number, and social security number.
"We understand that this may make some people uneasy, so we have taken steps to protect your identity by encrypting your SSN and never displaying that information on any part of our site." Credit Karma's FAQ
Is it safe?
"Credit Karma is committed to your safety. We follow the latest security precautions to protect your identity and your data. In fact we went a little bit over the top in an attempt to do everything possible to prevent unauthorized access to your information. Our site is registered with VeriSign and Hackersafe. Our office is protected by a 30lb beagle." Credit Karma's FAQ
Does checking my score negatively affect my credit?
"No. Credit Karma is making the credit score request on your behalf. Inquires made on your behalf will not be shown to creditors and will not affect your credit score." Credit Karma's FAQ
How can this be free? Are they going to sell you anything?
Credit Karma is ad-supported:
"Our business model relies on giving consumers good offers through our advertisers. We need to provide them with relevant, real and compelling pricing offers. There is no tension in this model because we take our pro-consumer bent seriously. We do not accept advertising or work with companies that take advantage of consumers. You will never see ads from payday lending companies or others who perpetuate debt and poor credit." Intuitive interview with Credit Karma's CEO.
Is this my FICO score?
"This San Francisco-based startup, with backing from Prosper's Chris Larsen, is delivering an actual credit score computed by TransUnion, one of the three major U.S. credit bureaus." Net Banker
Can I trust the people behind Credit Karma?
Kenneth Lin, the CEO and founder of Credit Karma, has worked for credit card companies and led marketing teams at Upromise and E-Loan. We interviewed Kenneth earlier this year about his vision for Credit Karma:
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Are there other ways to get free credit scores?
Yes. There are at least four other ways according to MyMoneyBlog (via Consumerist):
Of course, you can always get a free credit report from AnnualCreditReport.com.
More information about Credit Karma and credit scores:
I'm game. I just signed up for the 30-day free trial of the FICO credit monitoring so that I could see my score for free. (But I'm secretly shaking that I may forget to cancel before the hefty $89 fee is imposed.) This sounds like a much better deal.
BTW - are those your REAL scores in the screen shots? You don't have to answer, I was just thinking that they were pretty nifty... :)
Linsey
I tried signing up for this morning and the process was simple and painless enough. Much better than giving more money to FICo, etc. I have a fraud alert placed on my account from an earlier incident so it wouldn't get my score for me. I plan on trying it out in a few months when I get the fraud alert removed.
So far they have no way of reinstating access for those who previously had fraud alerts. Their FAQs seem to indicate otherwise but I was told that removal from their system was "permanent" once you placed a fraud alert (they claim to be coming up with a workaround but who knows when or if it will happen).
So I've been using creditkarma for about 5 months now and while it's nice that it's free, it doesn't really seem to track either my FICO or regularly generated FAKO scores...
I check my actual fico's ever 3 months and it's never been that close to them (via myfico.com), I check fake fico scores every month with credit keeper, that also doesn't bear much of a resemblence to the credit karma score.
While the CK score does seem to move up and down along with my fico/fako it also seems to change way less often, I know for a fact my scores changed upwards at a certain point in time and the CK score did not change...weird...
I signed up from the FICO website and checked it against my Karma score. The same. Maybe Karma doesn't show "real time" but it has to be pretty close.
Does anyone know of any sites that allow Canadians to similarly check their credit scores for free? I've had my eye out for quite some time, but to no avail unfortunately. :(
Thanks for the tip! My credit score is a lot better than I thought it would be considering I haven't had a credit card yet.
Under federal law you are entitled to receive a free copy of your credit report once every 12 months. You can visit http://www.AnnualCreditReport.com to order your free credit report.
There are other websites also, but most of the providers require sign up for the services like Identity theft protection, Credit monitor etc. Users must remember to cancel these services before the trial period ends.
You can also visit http://www.GetUrScore.com, this website provides the links to different providers of Free Credit Reports and Credit Scores and also gives the comparisons on offers from different providers.
The free scores on the Washington Mutual credit card website are being discontinued. Effective March 2009, they will no longer be available.
Wamucards has been discontinued and becoming CHASE. All customer have to moved to login on Chase website. My website will review this situation.
My favorites are:
CreditKarma.com - free credit score based on TransUnion data
Quizzle.com - free credit score based on Experian data
MyFICO.com - free (if you cancel) FICO credit score
Using these three you can get a very good idea about your current credit standing.
