Credit Karma Customer Community (2024)

FAQs

How many credit do you lose for looking at it on Credit Karma? ›

Checking your free credit scores on Credit Karma doesn't hurt your credit. These credit score checks are known as soft inquiries, which don't affect your credit at all. Hard inquiries (also known as “hard pulls”) generally happen when a lender checks your credit while reviewing your application for a financial product.

There may be an error in one of your credit reports

The reports you see on Credit Karma may not be exactly the same, but they should at least be accurate. Keeping in mind the reasons above, double-check you TransUnion and Equifax credit reports to make sure there isn't any incorrect information.

If you receive the error message, “We weren't able to create your account” when you try to open a new Credit Karma Money Spend or Save account, it means our system was unable to fully validate your identity. You can contact our support team and we will work with you to manually validate your information.

Credit bureaus suggest that five or more accounts — which can be a mix of cards and loans — is a reasonable number to build toward over time. Having very few accounts can make it hard for scoring models to render a score for you.

As someone with a 650 credit score, you are firmly in the “fair” territory of credit. You can usually qualify for financial products like a mortgage or car loan, but you will likely pay higher interest rates than someone with a better credit score. The "good" credit range starts at 690.

Highlights: While older models of credit scores used to go as high as 900, you can no longer achieve a 900 credit score. The highest score you can receive today is 850. Anything above 800 is considered an excellent credit score.

Your FICO Score is a credit score. But if your FICO score is different from another of your credit scores, it may be that the score you're viewing was calculated using one of the other scoring models that exist.

This is because Credit Karma makes use of another credit scoring model compared to many lenders and possibly does not have access to all the data required to calculate your credit score.

WalletHub is a decent Credit Karma alternative for people who want free access to their credit scores and not much else. Like Credit Karma, WalletHub provides education about financial topics and makes recommendations for financial products — but in a much more transparent way.

At Credit Karma, we make security a priority. This means we can only allow one Credit Karma account per email address. If you and another person currently share an email account and would both like Credit Karma accounts, we recommend signing up for another email address.

Can I create a new Credit Karma account? ›

You can create a new account to replace your existing one. Keep in mind, the information that was stored in your previous account, like any previous credit report history, won't be available through your new account.

You'll need to link your external bank account to start depositing funds into your Credit Karma Money Spend and Save accounts. You will use the same external linked account for both deposits and withdrawals, and you'll only be able to link one bank account at a time to your Credit Karma Money Spend and Save accounts.

However, multiple accounts may be difficult to track, resulting in missed payments that lower your credit score. You must decide what you can manage and what will make you appear most desirable. Having too many cards with a zero balance will not improve your credit score. In fact, it can actually hurt it.

You can borrow $50,000 - $100,000+ with a 750 credit score. The exact amount of money you will get depends on other factors besides your credit score, such as your income, your employment status, the type of loan you get, and even the lender.

Keep your cards open, if it makes sense

But closing a credit card could hurt you in terms of your credit scores. That's because one of the largest factors in your credit scores is your credit utilization ratio, or how much credit you're using compared with how much you have available. The lower that ratio, the better.

Credit Karma allows you to check your credit report and score for free, without affecting your score. The service doesn't hurt your credit score because it counts as a self-initiated inquiry, which is a soft credit inquiry.

They may differ by 20 to 25 points, and in some cases even more. When Credit Karma users see their credit score details, they are viewing a VantageScore, not the FICO score that the majority of lenders use.

Good news: Credit scores aren't impacted by checking your own credit reports or credit scores. In fact, regularly checking your credit reports and credit scores is an important way to ensure your personal and account information is correct, and may help detect signs of potential identity theft.

If you are viewing your score on Credit Karma, the score you see is VantageScore® 3.0. While VantageScore® credit scores aren't used as widely as FICO® scores for credit decisions, they can still give you a good idea of where your credit stands.