topic Re: Apple Card CLI & Hard Inquiries Allowance in Credit Cards

Apple Card CLI & Hard Inquiries Allowance

bubbafrombama — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 17:22:56 GMT

GS denied me an Apple Card CLI with a FICO 9 824 score because of too many hard inquiries. My credit report is an average decade, THIC and prime, and <1% utilization. All inquiries are over 90 days. I was expecting their inquiry date cutoff to be 3 months. Is it 4 or 6 months?

Re: Apple Card CLI & Hard Inquiries Allowance

GZG — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 17:41:54 GMT

@bubbafrombama wrote:
GS denied me an Apple Card CLI with a FICO 9 824 score because of too many hard inquiries. My credit report is an average decade, THIC and prime, and <1% utilization. All inquiries are over 90 days. I was expecting their inquiry date cutoff to be 3 months. Is it 4 or 6 months?

are you spending heavily on the card?

is your language 'too many inquires' or 'too many recent inquires'?

Re: Apple Card CLI & Hard Inquiries Allowance

bubbafrombama — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 17:46:50 GMT

I have been spending $1,000 to $2,000 a month for many months and always pay it off before due date. The language is exactly below. These were from a recent (over 3 months ago) HELOC (ended up going with DCU there FTW!).

Your TransUnion credit report shows you've made multiple recent applications for credit, which have resulted in hard inquiries on your credit file

Re: Apple Card CLI & Hard Inquiries Allowance

911gt34life — Sun, 21 Dec 2025 14:00:07 GMT

same here with apple card

Re: Apple Card CLI & Hard Inquiries Allowance

Openwater — Fri, 26 Dec 2025 03:46:49 GMT

I've had the Apple card for a while, use it only for Apple purchases. I have gotten slow but steady CLI's by consistently requesting every 90 days. Sometimes they deny me, sometimes they throw me a bone and add 1,000 to my limit. Their soft pulls for CLI don't show the whole picture so I think they are very sketchy on giving CLI's away. Seems like you are spending a decent amount each month, so I don't see why they wouldn't give it to you. My advise just keep at it. It's given me a couple of grand over time.

Re: Apple Card CLI & Hard Inquiries Allowance

Aim_High — Sun, 28 Dec 2025 19:55:30 GMT

@bubbafrombama wrote:
All inquiries are over 90 days. I was expecting their inquiry date cutoff to be 3 months. Is it 4 or 6 months?

I'm puzzled, @bubbafrombama. Where did you get the idea that 90 days or even four or six month is what Apple counts? I've never seen anything about that for Apple or even any other lender. You also never told us exactly how many inquiries you have on your file still reporting??

Inquiries stay on your reports for 24 months - a full two years. They are scorable for 12 months as far as impact to FICO. Lenders have their own internal standards on how many inquiries are acceptable but there may be minor variations with some lenders based on profile.

The velocity of inquiries over time is important. A lender may be okay with 3 in the past six months if those are all you've had in 24 months. On the other hand, 2 in six months might be too much if you've had 15 in the past 24!!

So that we can give good advice and also so that we can collect data points about these types of factors, a breakdown of your inquiries would be helpful. x/6; x/12; 2/24 is usually how we summarize them in 6, 12, and 24 month increments. I track mine separately by each of the three credit reporting bureaus (TU, EQ, and EX) as well as another accounting for new personal revolving credit accounts over the same time-frames.

Re: Apple Card CLI & Hard Inquiries Allowance

bubbafrombama — Sun, 28 Dec 2025 22:19:05 GMT

Thanks for the reply. To clarify, I’m not questioning how inquiries report or score in general — I understand they remain on the report for 24 months, are scorable for 12, and that lenders set their own internal thresholds around inquiry velocity and density.

What I’m trying to understand is Goldman Sachs’ handling of inquiry density specifically for Apple Card CLIs, since my denials don’t appear tied to FICO impact.

For context, my TransUnion hard inquiry summary is:

4 hard inquiries total
Dated 08/11, 08/13, 09/09, and 09/10 of 2025
2 of the 4 were mortgage-related inquiries
All are now 100–130+ days old
TU FICO 9 is 824, utilization <1%

Despite this, GS has denied multiple CLI attempts citing “multiple recent hard inquiries,” and the decisions appear tied to a fixed TU snapshot rather than dynamically re-aging between pulls.

So my question isn’t whether inquiries still exist, but whether GS is known to apply a rolling inquiry-cluster window (e.g., ~6 months) for Apple Card CLIs, or if anyone has seen DPs on when inquiry velocity typically stops blocking approvals.

Appreciate any Apple/GS-specific insight.

Re: Apple Card CLI & Hard Inquiries Allowance

northway — Sun, 28 Dec 2025 23:33:36 GMT

I had this problem when I first applied, but I found out through trial and error that GS looks back 90 days for any inquiries on TransUnion. They'll deny you before the 90 days are up saying too many inqs elsewhere.

Re: Apple Card CLI & Hard Inquiries Allowance

Aim_High — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 23:16:04 GMT

@bubbafrombama wrote:
Thanks for the reply. To clarify, I’m not questioning how inquiries report or score in general — I understand they remain on the report for 24 months, are scorable for 12, and that lenders set their own internal thresholds around inquiry velocity and density.

What I’m trying to understand is Goldman Sachs’ handling of inquiry density specifically for Apple Card CLIs, since my denials don’t appear tied to FICO impact.

For context, my TransUnion hard inquiry summary is:

4 hard inquiries total
Dated 08/11, 08/13, 09/09, and 09/10 of 2025
2 of the 4 were mortgage-related inquiries
All are now 100–130+ days old
TU FICO 9 is 824, utilization <1%
Despite this, GS has denied multiple CLI attempts citing “multiple recent hard inquiries,” and the decisions appear tied to a fixed TU snapshot rather than dynamically re-aging between pulls.

So my question isn’t whether inquiries still exist, but whether GS is known to apply a rolling inquiry-cluster window (e.g., ~6 months) for Apple Card CLIs, or if anyone has seen DPs on when inquiry velocity typically stops blocking approvals.

Appreciate any Apple/GS-specific insight.

Ah, gotcha @bubbafrombama. I helped compile some Apple card CLI data points a few years ago but the focus seemed to be more about Goldman's strict requirement for seeing good utilization of the existing credit limit to give an increase. We didn't really touch on those denied for new credit from what I recall. Sounds like @northway has had similar experiences though.

My guess is that Goldman's automated CLI process won't differentiate between mortgage and non-mortgage inquiries, so that might be holding you back. With 4/6 months, that's pretty high for most lenders tolerances IMO, but the good news is that by mid-March you can be 0/6 with no new inquiries. If the 120 days doesn't work out, I would think March would be a high probability of success. Good news is that they are soft pull and you can ask as often as you like. Come back when you get some good news so that we can maybe extrapolate some data for the community. Best wishes.