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Credit Karma score vs. 3 bureau scores

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Anonymous
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Credit Karma score vs. 3 bureau scores

Sooo I'm new to this but I'm curious, I know that there are different scoring models but my Credit Karma score shows a 577 but my bureau score between all 3 companies shows 650-667 why is it typical credit karma is that much lower??

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Anonymous
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Re: Credit Karma score vs. 3 bureau scores

CK scores are just weird. There are days my scores go up 50 points for nothing and then come down the next day.  Mine are way higher right than my FICO scores. So i guess it can go both ways.

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Anonymous
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Re: Credit Karma score vs. 3 bureau scores

Credit Karma uses Vantage 3 scoring and other lenders (most probably) use FICO scoring to decide to lend you money. Credit Karma also sells you credit products that seem to correlate with your score, but buyer beware: they are just statistically generated for folks like you with similar scores, and they make a profit on referred customers. They are not "customized" to you. The benefit to CK I find is to check changes to credit reports in real time almost; any inquiries on my report and CK is literally the first to let me know. Also to see where you are with the categories of credit scoring is a good tool. It also gives you TU and EQ reports which is unusual, as other free apps/services don't provide EQ Vantage for free, at least I haven't seen any. Only one iOS app, "Nav", gives you a free Experian Vantage score, AFAIK. EDIT: SO DOES CREDIT.COM (EX Vantage 3).

 

Vantage scoring uses 6 variables to measure your creditworthiness, and the bar for "good" is 700. Vantage scoring is used by many of the "Free" scoring apps, like CK, but also Credit Sesame, Wallethub, and so many others. Even Capital One's own Creditwise product uses Vantage scoring, even though the company itself uses FICO to lend you credit products. Vantage is a scoring system devised by the 3 bureaus themselves.

 

FICO scoring uses 5 variables and bar for "good" is 670. This is the scoring model most lenders use today. FICO 8 is pretty standard among lenders, but others use FICO 5, Goldman Sachs uses FICO 9 TU for the Apple Card.

 

Paying for myFICO, or Experian services will give you FICO scores. You can go to many services and sign up for $1 and get your scores, then cancel. And while it's not a score, until 2021, you can get your free credit report from each bureau every two weeks at annualcreditreport.com

 

EDIT: Added credit.com as free EX Vantage 3 score provider

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FlaDude
Established Contributor

Re: Credit Karma score vs. 3 bureau scores

As others have mentioned, Vantage is a completely different scoring model. My experience is that Vantage penalizes for high balances more than FICO does, when I was carrying a lot of CC balances my Vantage score was about 80 points lower than FICO, now that I don't have CC balances, they are pretty similar.

Scores: March 21 FICO 8: EX 810, TU 808, EQ 813
AoOA: closed: 36 years, open: 25 years; AAoA: 11.8 years
Amex Gold, Amex Green, Amex Blue, Amex ED, Amex Delta Gold, Amex Hilton Surpass, BoA Platinum Plus, Chase Freedom Unlimited, Chase Amazon, Chase CSP, Chase United Explorer, Citi AA Plat, Sync Lowes, Sync JC Penney - total CL 145k
Loans: Chase car loan (35k/6yrs 0.9%)
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