I'd suggest starting with the free sources and going from there. There are many people that spend very little or no money on credit monitoring services. I am one of them, so my opinion is always a very conservative one when it comes to shelling out cash for something you may not necessarily need.
I'd first recommend signing up with all of the free sites such as Credit Karma, WalletHub, CreditSesame, creditscorecard.com, credit.com, creditscore.com, savvymoney.com, etc. There are probably plenty of others too. Many of these sites provide things like reports and alerts at no cost to you. Some update monthly, others weekly, some even daily. If the no-cost options don't give you everything you're looking for, you can supplement them with periodic $1 trials from creditchecktotal. For $1 you'll get your 3B reports along with a handful of Fico scores (all 3 Fico 8s plus others). You just need to cancel the $1 trial within 7 days, then you're free to do another trial whenever you'd like as needed.
I use the above plan and have been doing it for years. During my rebuild I was hitting CCT $1 trials monthly or sometimes even twice monthly, where now I'm in a place where I haven't done one in probably 6 months. If I've done (say) $60 in CCT $1 trials over the years, the total cost I've ever spent on credit monitoring services has been $60. There are some people that will pay that or half that in a single month, which simply isn't for me.
