I'll quote llecs on this, cuz he lays it out nicely.
"Virtually everyone sells scores, but they are not all FICO scores. If you got scores from the big 3, then very likely 2 or all 3 of them are not FICO scores. Experian and TransUnion do not sell FICO scores on their website. Equifax does sell FICO scores but it is very hidden and difficult to find. It's not on their products page. We call these non-FICO scores, FAKOs, and can easily be as much as a few points to 100+ points off your real FICO when pulled the same day. If it didn't say "FICO" next to the score, then it isn't.
Other companies (e.g. freecreditreport.com, freescore.com, truecredit, creditkarma, Equifax Credit Complete, Quizzle, and dozens of others out there) sell scores, but they are nothing more than gimmicks and lenders don't use them. They do this because they want to avoid paying any fees to FICO and when they say "credit score" people buy it anyway on the assumption that it is a FICO. The scores are off because the formula is different, factors in different things as compared to FICO, and score ranges are different than FICO's (e.g. FICO is 300-850, Vantage is 501-990, PLUS is 330-830, TransRisk is 350-850, and so on)."
Hope that helps!
