I keep getting razzed for pointing out my "opinion" of things like this, so hopefully moderating myself a little bit here will avoid that.
No, Credit Karma and Experian's card matching features do not mean you'll get approved for a card.
Multiple people have even said that they were in the 90%+ odds on Experian and still got a hard pull and turned down.
My husband was 83% for an American Express Blue Cash Preferred, has very good credit and plenty of income, and good payment history on 4 existing credit cards, and Amex still declined it with several listed reasons, and I'll quote them directly so that we don't get someone trying to claim that I'm being unfair:
The amount of credit available on your bank credit card account with the least credit available is too low (Experian)
Our evaluation of the accounts on your credit report based on the number, type, length of time opened, and credit risk level. (Experian)
The length of time is too short since the first account on your credit report was opened. (Experian)
Too few credit card accounts on which, in our estimation, you have paid a majority of the balance in recent months. (Experian)
So, in fact, according to Amex themselves, they have numerous requirements that fewer than average people would actually manage to get past. "Average" meaning, that with some other companies, you are more likely to get a card even with no pre-established credit history at all.
For example, Capital One gave my husband his first card with no established credit history, and Discover followed that by giving him a Discover It card just several months after that.
Let us also go through each one of these reasons Amex gave him, line by line.
They admit that you have to have a card with a high available credit limit. His highest credit limit is $600 because Capital One and Discover both lowered credit limits earlier in the year and said they were shoring up their risks due to the Coronavirus crisis, which they expect will result in bankruptcies due to high unemployment at some point.
The last one is also a real head-scratcher because we use the cards like a debit card (for points) and pay them all off multiple times per month. Therefore, it is impossible that "the majority of the balance is not paid in full" each month on any of the cards, much less the majority.
They admit that they get their decision-making "facts" from Experian, which is the one that recommended Amex in the first place, and Experian states that their matching tool is driven by creditors working directly with them to tell consumers what to apply for based on the requirements for the card.
They stipulate to having higher standards about the length of account history than other companies do.
In fact, it seems that people are better off by asking the card companies directly to pre-screen them for something because the three times my husband did that, he got the cards they pre-screened him for directly.
In fact, Experian is making a commission, as is CreditKarma, each time someone gets approved for a card. And they aren't the ones who will suffer from having their credit knocked down 5 or 10 points with a hard pull decline. So, it's logical to say that they have an incentive to fuzz and make it seem you're likely to get a card, and then they can say (when you're declined) tha there was a "17% chance" you wouldn't.
Whereas people who have been through a bankruptcy (my husband hasn't, but I have) especially don't need any negative factors, it therefore reasons that they should be particularly skeptical of commission-based sites that recommend them for cards they may actually not get based on some black box formula that tries boiling down very complex requirements that they may not meet into a percentage.
