Found a really accurate FICO estimator.

[haulingthescoreup]

775 - 825 for me. I suppose so; I'm down on the lower end of that.

It didn't ask how many CL's had lates on them, which is one of the reasons why my scores aren't higher.

btw, the site doesn't claim to be a FICO score estimator. It's just a "credit score" estimator. So I suppose the legal department at FICO can settle back down.

It's from the fine folks who bring you TrueCredit FAKO's, which for me have always been completely wacko.

[Macroman]

I checked mine, I am in the upper part of they're score range.

[MattH]

Hmm, the one at Bankrate with which I have long been familiar estimates a range of 765-815 for me; the one at realtor.com estimates a range of 800 to 850 for me.  The Bankrate one comes somewhat closer to my actual scores, perhaps partly because the Bankrate one comes from the actual Fico people and also asks more questions.

There is a longstanding business relationship between Bankrate and Fico; each often has links to the other.  And I have found both to have high-quality information.

[RobertEG]

Credit score simulators are good, but  for only one thing.

They provide sound advice in weighing the relative impact of various actions you might want to take, and help you plot a path of action.

So the have their merit.

But no simulator is really capable of any accurate prediction of specific scores. If they are, then Brother Fair Isaac would be out of most of their business.

All credit scoring algorithms, regardless of whether they be FICO or others, are based on closely guarded trade secrets.  They are totally proprietary.

As trade secrets, they are subject to reverse engineering, which is not a violation of trade secret law. 

Anyone who has a trade secret scoring algorithm that is making them money would be insane to provide any simulator of their algorithm that would assist anyone in their reverse engineering efforts.  Thus, the FICO simulator does not, for exxample, let you put in data on multiple categores of scorng at the same time (e.g., payment history, % util, lenght of credit, credit mix), and evaluate the overall affect on scoring.  That just wont happen.

[MattH]

---

@RobertEG wrote:

Credit score simulators are good, but  for only one thing.

They provide sound advice in weighing the relative impact of various actions you might want to take, and help you plot a path of action.

So the have their merit.

But no simulator is really capable of any accurate prediction of specific scores. If they are, then Brother Fair Isaac would be out of most of their business.

All credit scoring algorithms, regardless of whether they be FICO or others, are based on closely guarded trade secrets.  They are totally proprietary.

As trade secrets, they are subject to reverse engineering, which is not a violation of trade secret law. 

Anyone who has a trade secret scoring algorithm that is making them money would be insane to provide any simulator of their algorithm that would assist anyone in their reverse engineering efforts.  Thus, the FICO simulator does not, for exxample, let you put in data on multiple categores of scorng at the same time (e.g., payment history, % util, lenght of credit, credit mix), and evaluate the overall affect on scoring.  That just wont happen.

---

Very true. Of course any large lender can get a pretty darned good idea how various factors affect FICO scores by simply crunching their own vast databases.

[RobertEG]

Fair Isaac does not maintain a full database of current consumer credit information.  That is not their business. Neither does any individual creditor.Creditors (voluntarily) report to a CRA, not to each other.   So all one indiv creditor has, no matter how large they are, are only the records for their individual customers.

That is why they pay money to CRAs to get scoring based on a nationwide database of all consumers.

Fair Issac does not directly score you.  They license the tool to score you to the holders of the data.  FICO scores you get are not generated back at Fair Isaac, they are generated directly by the licensee of the FICO scoring tool.  And when they license use ot the proprietary scoring algorithms, they are not provided the details of its workings.

REverse engineering of FICO scoring is not easy to accomplish, as exhibited by its many, many years as the first, and now foremost, source of creditor requests for consumer credit scores.  When the Vabtage scoring algorithms were initially marketed some years ago, which was a joint effort between the three CRAs to produce an algorithm to compete with Fair Isaac, it resulted in legal action between them for trade secret appropriation.  Vantage scoring is now derisively referred to as "FAKO" scorng, and most lendors never bought into it. 

If the three major CRAs could not block the FICO juggernaut, I doubt that any individual will.

[marty56]

---

@fused wrote:

The estimator was spot on for me.

---

The simulator said with a BK just over 1 year old, my credit score could be 780.  120 day late in the same time could net me an 800.  Or 830 if the late is over 2 years old.  Don't know about the BK part but IMHO they assume every late is a 30 day.

LOL it's a FAKO FICO score estimater and like most FAKO scores, worthless.

[marty56]

LOL also the programmers did a poor job of data validation.  I mentioned that I got my first account 1 year ago and was late more than 2 years ago and it calculated a value for my credit score. 

[Anonymous]

Hey dudes and dudettes,

Remember this site has a lovely (and truly FICO focused) estimator.  This is the real deal.  I like it better than the ScoreWatch estimator because you can play around with it a little more:

myfico score estimator

[BungalowMo]

hahaha...the Realtor estimator told me my EQ score (punched in info from my last fico report) should be between 731 & 781 ---actual - 687!  (WAY off!)

Their TU estimate.... 716 - 766...actual - 753  (much closer)