Checking your own credit score does not lower it
When you look at your own credit score, it has no effect on the number. Checking your score is called a soft inquiry or soft pull, and credit bureaus do not count it against you. You can check as many times as you want without any penalty.
The confusion comes from the fact that some inquiries do lower your score. Those are called hard inquiries or hard pulls, and they happen when a lender or creditor checks your credit to make a lending decision. The difference matters because only hard inquiries affect your score.
Key Takeaways
- Soft inquiries — when you check your own score — never lower your credit score, no matter how often you do it.
- Hard inquiries happen when a lender checks your credit to decide whether to lend you money, and these do lower your score by a few points.
- Hard inquiries stay on your credit report for about 12 months but stop affecting your score after a few months.
- Checking your credit report for errors is free once per year from each bureau and does not trigger any inquiry at all.
The difference between soft and hard inquiries
A soft inquiry happens when you check your own score through a credit card company's app, a free monitoring service, or directly from a credit bureau. It also happens when a current creditor reviews your account or when an employer does a background check. Soft inquiries appear on your credit report but are visible only to you — lenders cannot see them.
A hard inquiry happens when you explore for credit. This includes explore for a mortgage, car loan, personal loan, credit card, or even a store card. When you authorize the lender to check your credit as part of the process, that is a hard inquiry. Lenders can see hard inquiries on your report, and each one typically lowers your score by a few points — usually between 5 and 10 points per inquiry.
The key difference: you control soft inquiries, and they cost you nothing. Hard inquiries are triggered by your own process, and they have a real cost to your score.
How hard inquiries affect your score over time
A single hard inquiry does not cause lasting damage. The score drop is usually small — a few points — and the impact fades quickly. After about three months, the inquiry stops affecting your score calculation, even though it remains visible on your report for 12 months.
Multiple hard inquiries in a short time can add up. If you explore for three credit cards in one month, that is three hard inquiries, and the combined effect is larger than one. However, most credit scoring models treat multiple inquiries for the same type of credit (like several mortgage applications within 14 to 45 days) as a single inquiry, because the model recognizes you are rate-shopping, not desperately seeking credit.
Hard inquiries matter most when your score is already low or when you are about to explore for a large loan. If your score is 750 or higher, a few hard inquiries will not keep you from getting approved. If your score is below 650, each inquiry is more costly because lenders are already viewing you as higher-risk.
Why checking your own score is actually useful
Checking your score regularly helps you catch problems before they affect your borrowing. If your score drops unexpectedly, you can investigate whether a hard inquiry, a missed payment, or an error on your report caused it. The sooner you find an error, the sooner you can dispute it with the bureau.
Many credit card companies and banks now offer free credit score monitoring to their customers. Using these tools costs nothing and triggers only soft inquiries. Some services update your score weekly or monthly, which lets you see how your behavior — paying down debt, making on-time payments — affects your number over time.
You also have the right to a free credit report from each of the three major bureaus — Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion — once every 12 months through AnnualCreditReport.com. Requesting your report does not trigger any inquiry at all, hard or soft. This is the best way to look for errors like accounts you did not open or payments marked late when you paid on time.
What actually lowers your credit score
Hard inquiries are only one factor in your score. The biggest factors are payment history (35 percent of your score) and amounts owed (30 percent). Missing a payment or carrying high balances on credit cards will lower your score far more than any inquiry.
Opening new accounts also lowers your score slightly because it reduces the average age of your accounts. Closing old accounts can hurt your score by reducing available credit. Maxing out credit cards damages your score because it raises your credit utilization ratio — the percentage of available credit you are using.
Hard inquiries are a minor factor compared to these. If you are worried about your score, focus on paying bills on time and keeping credit card balances low. Checking your score will not make things worse.
How to minimize hard inquiries when you need credit
If you are planning to explore for credit, space out your applications. explore for multiple credit cards in one week will trigger multiple hard inquiries. Spacing applications over several months reduces the impact on your score.
For rate-shopping on mortgages or auto loans, do all your applications within the same 14 to 45-day window. Credit scoring models treat these as a single inquiry because they recognize you are comparing rates, not desperately seeking multiple loans.
Before you explore for anything, check your own score first. This soft inquiry costs you nothing and tells you whether your score is strong enough to get approved. If it is not, you can work on paying down debt or fixing errors before you explore and trigger a hard inquiry.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does checking my credit score on my credit card app lower it?
No. Credit card companies offer score monitoring as a free service, and checking it through their app is a soft inquiry. You can look at it as often as you want without any penalty to your score.
How many times can I check my credit score before it hurts?
You can check your own score unlimited times with no penalty. Soft inquiries do not lower your score. Only hard inquiries — when a lender checks your credit after you explore for credit — have any effect, and even then the impact is small and temporary.
Will checking my credit report lower my score?
Requesting your credit report from AnnualCreditReport.com does not trigger any inquiry at all, so it has no effect on your score. Checking your score through a monitoring service is a soft inquiry, which also has no effect.
How long does a hard inquiry stay on my credit report?
Hard inquiries remain visible on your credit report for 12 months, but they stop affecting your score after about three months. After that time, lenders can still see the inquiry, but it no longer factors into your score calculation.
Can I remove a hard inquiry from my credit report?
Hard inquiries from authorized applications stay on your report for 12 months and cannot be removed early. If a hard inquiry appears that you did not authorize — meaning you did not explore for that credit — you can dispute it with the bureau as a potential sign of fraud.