hard vs. soft pull

[nmorton79]

I know this sounds stupid, but, I don't know the difference between a hard pull and a soft pull.  Could someone please explain?  Thanx.

[Anonymous]

Hard pulls are when a prospective creditor pulls your credit report. These generate an inquiry, which is added to your credit report and which dings your FICO just a bit.

Soft pulls are when YOU pull your credit. Lenders don't see them, and they don't affect your FICO score at all.

[haulingthescoreup]

And to add, soft pulls also come from companies doing pre-approvals (if you're not already with them) and doing account maintenance/ account review (if you are.)

For pre-approvals, companies buy lists of those who fit into various ranges of scores and maybe the presence or absence of various derogatories. If their ranges are pretty broad, you can still get denied, which is why these aren't any kind of guarantee of acceptance. They only get your name and address, so that they can clutter up your mailbox.

For account review and account maintenance, they are seeing your actual credit report, including what's going on with your other accounts. They're keeping an eye on them to see if you qualify for better rates or limits, or alternatively for a credit spanking, with decreased limits, higher rates, and outright account closure.

If you want to see who's softing you, you have to look at full reports from the credit bureaus. You can pull this once a year for free by going through annualcreditreport.com, or if you've done this within the last year, you can go to each credit bureau site and order ONE report there. Don't order all three reports from one bureau, or you'll get the short version. Also, don't pay for their scores or their monitoring services, at least not then. The scores are FAKO's, and I'd sign up for a monitoring service if you want one on a different log-in session. They've been know to tangle things up.