What Credit Score Do You Start With?
7 Min Read | Last updated: July 3, 2025
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What does your credit score start at? Learn how to begin with a solid score and maintain it for the long-term. Start building your credit wisely.
At-A-Glance
- Six months after you first establish credit, scoring models generate the first version of your credit score based on your financial behaviors.
- You may be considered to be credit invisible before creating a credit history, but once you establish credit, your scores could range from 300-850.
- When you practice responsible borrowing habits, you can make a positive impact on your credit score no matter where you start.
In order to start your credit journey, you often have to build a credit history with the major credit bureaus that then feed your data to scoring models, generating a credit score. Until then, you don’t start at zero.1 You may appear as having no credit or being credit invisible, which means you could have a harder time accessing credit products, like a mortgage.
What Is a Credit Score?
A credit score is simply a measure of creditworthiness that gives lenders an indicator of how likely you are to repay your debt. Learning how to maintain and grow your score can help set you up for better borrowing success, but this process may take time and discipline. If you’re unhappy with your current starting credit score, you might be glad to know that your score is not fixed, and it could improve in time.
How Do You Get a Credit Score?
FICO® Scores from the Fair Issac Corporation are used by 90% of lenders.2 Collecting enough data to generate a FICO score takes at least six months from the time you first establish credit.3 Besides FICO, VantageScore®, from VantageScore Solutions, is another major scoring model the three bureaus created.4 The three major U.S. credit bureaus, Experian®, Equifax®, and TransUnion®, are leaders in credit history data collection.
Generating a credit score often involves two steps for credit bureaus:
- Collecting data about a person’s borrowing and repayment habits.
- Applying that data to an algorithmic scoring model that aims to help lenders assess whether a person is likely to repay their debt on time.
To get this process off the ground, you can take out a loan or credit card, and manage that credit responsibly, making on-time payments. Learn how to build your credit from scratch with credit cards.
What Does Your Credit Score Start At?
Getting a strong first version of your credit score often depends on demonstrating responsible borrowing habits as soon as possible and as long as possible thereafter. The most highly weighted factor in your credit score calculation is your payment history, so paying on time and in full is the most beneficial way to borrow.5
To learn more about credit scores and how they’re defined, here’s a rundown of the five credit score factors and the estimated portion of your FICO Score they influence:6
- Payment History
Payment history counts for an estimated 35% of your FICO Score’s calculation, so aim for consistent payments on debt. - Credit Utilization
Credit utilization counts for an estimated 30% and refers to how much available credit you’re using. The lower your credit utilization, the more it benefits your score. - Credit History Length
The age of your credit history counts for an estimated 15%. Time is your friend here. The longer your average account age, the more positive of an impact it may have on your score. - Credit Mix
Credit product diversity accounts for an estimated 10%. A mix of loans and credit cards, for example, suggests a more diverse mix than just one car loan, potentially impacting your score in positive ways. - Recent Inquiries
Every time you apply to open a new account, a lender makes a hard credit check, which might temporarily negatively impact your score. The more spaced out your hard inquiries are, the better it can be for your credit score because you look less dependent on loans and credit cards.7
What Age Does Your Credit Score Start?
While you must be 18 or older to open a credit card account, you can start building a credit history earlier as an authorized user on a trusted friend’s or family member’s credit card.8 You can also explore secured credit cards that require a deposit to open and use or look into a personal credit-building loan. Conveniently, all the same tips for building a good credit score can apply to responsibly managing all types of credit accounts.
What’s the Most Common Starting Credit Score?
So what credit score will you start at? That depends!
Before you build a credit history, you don’t start at zero. Rather, you start as credit invisible, which means you have no credit score, and work your way toward credit visibility.
However, there are credit score ranges, and once you start building a credit history, the lowest score possible would be 300 for both FICO and VantageScore.9
As you build your credit score over time by continuously practicing good credit habits, you may start to see your credit score improve in time.
How to Improve Your Credit Score
Knowing what affects your score is often the first step to improvement.
- Autopay can work for you.
If you’ve missed debt payments simply because you’re forgetful, consider setting up automatic payments online to make paying bills easier so you won’t miss any due dates. - Mix and manage when necessary.
Getting a second credit card or an installment loan might help your score because it shows that you’re able to manage a good mix of credit, just prepare for hard inquiries and try to keep them to a minimum. - Keep your credit utilization low.
If you do open a second card, remember that credit scoring models favor low credit utilization rates. Making additional monthly payments may help you keep your utilization rate low, potentially benefiting your score. - Rent payments don’t automatically count, but they can.
What’s more, new DIY credit reporting tools could enable you to write and boost your credit history by linking payment history for day-to-day expenses like rent payments, which credit bureaus may not report on.
Did you know?
Monitoring your credit score and report score can be free, easy, and rewarding with American Express® MyCredit Guide. It can also help you scan and detect fraudulent activity that might compromise your score.
Why Is Having a Beginning Credit Score So Important?
While it’s more than possible to pay for everything life demands with cash, it’s not always realistic. Without a starting credit score, you may have difficulty buying a house or even renting an apartment, getting a lower insurance premium, and in some cases, even applying for a job. Lenders and landlords alike lack measurable insights into your financial habits without a credit score.
Established credit scores could open more opportunities in the form of mortgages, car loans, or even more premium credit cards that offer rewards or cashback on purchases. Even starting credit scores may place some financial products and lender approvals closer within reach.
Frequently Asked Questions
There is no standard starting number for credit scores, rather a presence of credit or an absence of credit. Your friend may start at 300 while you start higher due to having been an authorized user previously or if you reported rent payments to credit bureaus before opening your first line of credit.
How long it takes to achieve a credit score of 700 depends primarily on your credit habits. In addition to responsible credit habits, like making on-time payments, the key to making credit score strides often lies in consistency, so aim to be as responsible as often as you can when using credit.
Checking your own credit score qualifies as a soft credit check or soft inquiry and does not have any impact on your credit score.10 Similarly, credit bureaus view your request to review your credit report as a soft inquiry, so do so without fear.
The Takeaway
Before you have an established credit profile and starting credit score, you’re often credit invisible and could have difficulty getting approved for loans, rentals, and credit cards. Opening your first line of credit and prioritizing good borrowing habits like on-time payments, regular credit-score monitoring, and low balances could help you positively impact your credit score, building up your borrowing power.
1,9 “What credit score do you start with?,” Bankrate
2,5,7 “Which Credit Score Is Most Important?,” Experian
3,6 “What Is a Good Credit Score?,” Experian
4 “What Is a VantageScore Credit Score?,” Experian
8 “Build credit with no credit history in 6 simple steps,” CNBC
10 “Will Checking Your Credit Hurt Credit Scores?,” Equifax
Megan Doyle is a business technology writer and researcher whose work focuses on financial services and cross-cultural diversity and inclusion.
All Credit Intel content is written by freelance authors and commissioned and paid for by American Express.
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The material made available for you on this website, Credit Intel, is for informational purposes only and intended for U.S. residents and is not intended to provide legal, tax or financial advice. If you have questions, please consult your own professional legal, tax and financial advisors.
