Different Types of Credit Scores

When lenders ask each of the three major credit bureaus – Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion – for your credit score to predict your credit risk, they usually get scores ranging from 300 to 850.¹ The greater the number, the better your chances of being approved for credit cards and loans, and the lower the interest rate you’ll likely be offered.¹

But you may have different credit scores, depending on the bureau.¹ How is that possible?

In scoring your history, credit bureaus typically use the same scoring model – usually FICO² – but they work independently, don’t share information, and have proprietary algorithms to weigh and calculate the five main factors that make up your credit score: payment history, credit utilization, amount of credit owed, credit age/history, credit mix, and new credit.³ What’s more, there are many types of credit scores.

Since the credit bureaus use similar predictive scoring systems to figure out your credit risk, if you have a high score with one bureau, you may have a high score across the board. Still, scores can vary by several points because bureaus use multiple credit score versions, further distilled into two main categories: base scores and industry-specific scores.^1,3 Lenders decide which credit score version they’ll use when evaluating your credit risk.⁴

Base credit scores help predict the likelihood that you will or won’t pay your agreed upon credit obligation, whether it's a mortgage, credit card, or student loan.¹ Base scores come in many historical versions, and lenders generally aren’t required to upgrade to the most recent⁵ – meaning a lender might still use FICO Score 8, even though FICO Score 10 was announced in early 2020. Industry-specific scores are optimized for lenders that may be asking for your credit score to assess risk on specific types of credit obligation, like car loans, mortgages, and insurance companies.⁶

While base credit scores and industry-specific credit scores use the same scoring models, their algorithms can be adjusted to give lenders more targeted risk assessments. There are 20 different FICO scoring models that can be used by lenders.⁷ Your score may vary depending on how the lender requests it.⁴ In other words, you may have a different FICO score for a car dealer than for a bank, even if both are considering your car loan.⁴

Your credit reports are typically updated as the credit bureaus receive information from your creditors, so they might, for example, change the moment you pay your credit card bill – since payment history and credit utilization ratio are factored into your creditworthiness.⁸ However, credit scores aren’t necessarily pulled at the same time, so your credit files across the three bureaus may have different information at a particular moment – some of which may no longer be up-to-date.¹

So, even if all three credit bureaus use the same credit scoring model, inconsistencies could still occur among the credit scores due to variations in the data – meaning your score can sometimes fluctuate by 20 points or more.⁹ That’s why lenders and creditors looking to evaluate your risk and understand your past financial affairs will sometimes request scores from all three bureaus, and then use the middle score when making decisions about your credit or loans.⁹

Most lenders, credit card companies, and other financial institutions submit financial data in monthly reports to the three bureaus, but they don’t always share the same information.⁸ Just as timing can fluctuate, so can the sources of information for different types of credit reports, and that, too, can affect variations in credit scores.¹⁰ For instance, an account in collection may appear on one credit report but not another. Such negative information – accounts in collections, foreclosures, and bankruptcies, which credit bureaus often refer to as “derogatory” items – are considered part of your payment history and can carry more weight than other factors, which can adversely affect credit scores.¹¹