Posted by: Odysseas Papadimitriou

There’s no need to worry about how to check your credit score anymore. It’s easy, fast and quite safe these days. For example, you can check your credit score for free in less than two minutes on WalletHub, the only site that offers free daily updates.

You just have to quickly confirm your identity, and you’ll be on the road to top WalletFitness.

Get My Credit Score - 100% Free

In addition to free online services such as WalletHub, many credit card companies now offer free monthly credit scores to their customers and, in a couple of cases, the general public. However you choose to go about it, checking your credit score is an important step that you should try to repeat regularly. Roughly 44% of people haven’t done so in the past year, according to the National Foundation for Credit Counseling. And credit scores can change whenever new information is added to your credit reports.

With that in mind, let’s take a closer look at the best places to check your credit score, the benefits of doing so and whether it really matters what type of credit score you check.

Where to Check Your Credit Score

WalletHub isn’t the only place you can get your credit score. It’s just the best, in our humble (and biased) opinion. Below, you can find a quick comparison of some of the most popular alternatives that anyone can sign up for.

Site / App	Cost	Scores Updated…	Average User Rating	Free Credit Report?	24/7 Credit Monitoring
WalletHub	Free	Daily	5 Stars	Yes	Yes
Credit Sesame	Free	Monthly	4.6 Stars	No	Yes
MyFICO.com	$19.95/mo.	Monthly	4.3 Stars	Yes	Yes
Capital One	Free	Monthly	4.5 Stars	No	Yes
Credit Karma	Free	Weekly	4.5 Stars	Yes	Yes
Equifax	$17.95/mo.	Monthly	4.4 Stars	Yes	Yes
Discover	Free	Monthly	4.3 Stars	No	No
Mint	Free	Every 3 Months	4.3 Stars	No	Yes
Quizzle	Free	Every 3 Months	4.3 Stars	Yes	No
Experian	$19.95/mo.	Monthly	4.0 Stars	Yes	Yes
AARP	$12.99/mo.	Monthly	No Rating	Yes	Yes

Note: Some providers with paid services offer free trials. For simplicity, we did not list that information in the table above.

For more information about these credit-score providers and a complete list of where you can get your credit score, check out our detailed comparison of the best credit score sites.

Benefits of Checking Your Credit Score

It’s always good to brush up on the benefits of checking your credit score. And here are some of the most important:

Checking Your Credit Score…

• Gives you a pretty good sense of your financial fitness.

• Helps you determine what loan and credit card terms you can get approved for as well as whether your score is costing you money.

• Makes comparing financial products easier, since most offers list the credit score (e.g. Excellent, Good, Bad) needed to qualify.

• Tells you how closely you need to be reviewing your credit reports. A score that is much lower than you’d expect is an obvious red flag, perhaps indicating potential fraud.

Finally, it’s important to remember that virtually everyone has room for credit-score improvement. And a better credit score could be worth thousands of dollars per year. Plus, tending to your score doesn’t have to cost you a dime, nor much time. So check out our handy credit improvement tips to get started.

Which Credit Score Should You Check?

Most people don’t know it, but we each have many different credit scores. Some estimates even peg the figure at 1,000+. But the truth is it doesn’t really matter which one you check, as long as it’s free and from a reputable source.

There are a couple of important reasons for that:

1. Similar Results: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found a 90% correlation among a selection of the most common credit-score models.

2. Hard to Get a Lender’s Exact Score: It’s often impossible to determine the exact type of credit score a given lender will use, particularly since many lenders use their own customized scores that are developed in-house. And if you can’t get the particular type of credit score your lender of choice will use to evaluate your application, there’s really no reason to be picky.

You can learn more about all of this in our article on why there is no “real” credit score. For what it’s worth, WalletHub’s free credit scores are based on the VantageScore 3.0 model. VantageScore 3.0 is one of the most popular types of credit scores among lenders. And it is considered by some to be the most predictive credit score available.

    Image: Jane_Kelly / iStock.

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