Some banks and credit cards offer free credit scores. You don't get free credit scores without membership with someone or paying for it. You can get free access to each credit report (not score) once a year. You can also get a free report when you get denied for credit.
You can get free FAKO (not FICO) scores from places like Credit Karma, Credit Sesame, Mint (if you link an account) and Quizzle. Some credit cards and banks give free FICO scores. For example, Discover and Barclays gives a free TU FICO 08 score to people who have their cards. Citi will start giving Equifax FICO scores in 2015 and Amex is experimenting with offering free Experian FICO scores to a test group of card members (they might do a full rollout later but it could be canceled). Some banks/other cards give FICO scores as well.
The Myfico website allows you to purchase all three of your FICO 08 scores. Just bear in mind the FICO score you get and the score a lender pulls may not be the same. For example, the score available here is your FICO 08 score. Most CC companies pull the FICO 08 score or use their own internal scoring mechanism. Most home lenders use FICO 04 scores (not available to us) which can be different. Many auto lenders use auto enhanced FICO scores that are different. While 90% of the top 100 lenders (or something like that) use FICO scores, there are many types of FICO scores and the score you get here or anywhere else may not be the score they pull.
With that said your FICO 08 scores, and to a lesser extent FAKO (fake FICO) scores, are useful to give you an idea of what range your score falls in and the general trend in your score. With that said, Credit Karma scores are often signifcantly off and of limited use for any purpose other than tracking the general trend of your score.
