No effect unless inquiry or material change in revolving utilization metrics as you noted: neither of those are the case here.
The real question before or after new card, hard to say. It can be problematic to gauge because it takes time for the new limit to report, some bureaus actually track what the limit at what time (hi Transunion) and depending what the lender is paying for they may see it.
If it were me, I'd hedge my bets: I'd do the SP CLI and see what I got, and then I'd immediately go apply for the next card. This is doubly true if you have any sort of financial relationship with the new creditor already... it won't hurt your score, but their UW might pick up the change and there's more than just a FICO score when it comes to approval: people making lots of changes at once can get flagged for closer inspection and as such I err on making changes that won't show up on my credit report for a while before ones that will happen immediately unless there will be a material difference in credit worthiness which there won't here.
@Jazee wrote:I'm doing AZEO (all cards zero balance except one) and have 3 cards and am pretty sure I'm eligible for a credit limit increase on one of the cards I keep a zero balance on. If I'm about to apply for a 4th card, would getting a CLI on the other card first hurt or help my score, or make no difference? I expect the CLI will take my total availble revolving credit from $15K to $18K Specifically the 4th card will be the NFCU AMEX Rewards. I already got the NFCU Platinum coming up on 3 months ago with $3K limit. The utilization percentages both total and individual would essentially be unchanged after the CLI because the 3rd card with the balance is only 2% UTI to begin with so the change in total UTI would be insignificant considering the other two cards are zero balance. So would the CLI (after the new balance is reported of course) have any potential positive/negative effect? The CLI would be a SOFT pull.
No effect one way or the other.
