CreditKarma is an excellent free tool to monitor your TU and EQ reports on a weekly basis. Pay no attention to the scores. The majority of the lenders base their decisions on FICO scores, reports.
As pretty much everyone stated, Vantage 3 scores are calculated differently than FICO scores which are the ones that are used by more than 90% of creditor's. Therefore there is no comparison and why so many people have different V3 vs FICO scores. I'm assuming you know the weight FICO puts on certain factors but here's a chart of the weight V3 uses. My FICO 8 & 9 scores are in my sig. My V3 score is 827 for both TU and EQ. Although different than FICO, mine do not have as great a variance as some I've seen.
Ck is great for monitoring your activity; when and what changes occur. I have a monthly MYFICO subscription and use CK to determine when all accounts have reported to EQ and TU so I can then pull my 3B from MyFICO. I also have an EX subscription. Although the "report" date is the same for lenders, each bureau updates on different days.
Credit Karma is good for keeping track of information on your credit reports. They do a pretty good job of having thorough information. However, as far as scores go, you can't really make any direct inferences between CK scores and FICO scores. I have found that certain activities may result in a large drop on CK (like a high balance) but not as drastic on FICO (and vice versa). It's also good to keep track of inquiries, but not account age because they don't count closed accounts toward aging. Knowing the differences between the two is important so that you don't make credit decisions based on the assumption that they're the same or similar.
I’ve been on both ends of the Spectrum - before my app spree, CK scores were in the 780’s-790’s while F8 scores were 750’s - 760’s. Now my F8 scores are high 730’s - high 740’s my CK scores are 700’s - 710’s. CK Vantage 3.0 scores tend to move dramatically with any changes, while F8 scores seem to stay much more stable. My F8 scores averaged dropping 17 points across the board for a 5 card app spree, while CK scores averaged dropping 82 points.
@Anonymous wrote:My scores on Credit Karma are 50 points lower for TU and 18 points lower for EQ than my FICO 8 scores but that's mild compared to people who have discovered their scores to be 100+ points higher or lower than Credit Karma.
If you want to get your real scores, creditchecktotal.com offers all three of your FICO 8 scores for $1. Just cancel the trial so you don't get billed or it's $29.99 a month going forward.
