How many times can you run your credit before your FICO score goes down?

Answer by  John (9008)

The formula is not publicly known, so no one is sure. You are usually not penalized for comparison shopping for a mortgage, but multiple credit requests can hurt it.

Answer by  shaunhaines (131)

If you're talking about doing a credit check on yourself through an online service or program, then that activity has no influence on your FICO score. On the other hand, each and every time your credit is checked because you've applied for credit, your FICO score will be slightly lowered.

Answer by  Christopher2600 (108)

You can run your own credit as many times as you want and it won't affect your score. For other people running your credit you can have it ran roughly 3 times (per year) by one type of business before it really affects your score.

Answer by  tamarawilhite (17883)

If you run each credit bureau report one time within a year, this has no impact on your credit score at all. If the credit check is run by a monitoring service by the credit reporting firm, there is no impact on your credit score. Otherwise, more than one check a month can lower the score.