Business Credit Scores: Experian, Equifax, and D&B PAYDEX

Business credit scores are risk ratings that lenders, suppliers, and landlords use to decide whether to extend credit to a company. Three bureaus dominate the field, and each uses its own scale: Experian’s Intelliscore Plus runs from 0 to 100, Equifax’s Business Credit Risk Score spans 101 to 992, and Dun & Bradstreet’s PAYDEX ranges from 1 to 100. Unlike personal credit files, anyone can buy a copy of your business credit report without your permission, and the federal protections you’re used to on the consumer side largely don’t apply.

How Business Credit Is Different From Personal Credit

The Fair Credit Reporting Act governs how consumer reporting agencies handle personal data, but its core protections do not extend to business credit files.¹ Four practical consequences follow from that gap.

You are not entitled to a free annual business credit report. Federal law guarantees free consumer reports each year, but that right stops at the personal side. To see your own business scores, you pay each bureau separately.²
Negative information has no time limit. Derogatory marks on personal credit typically fall off after seven years. Business bureaus face no such deadline and can report negative payment history indefinitely.
Your report is publicly accessible. A competitor, a potential partner, or a curious stranger can purchase your business credit report with no notice to you. Personal reports require a permissible purpose under federal law.
The scales are not comparable. Personal FICO scores run 300 to 850. Business scales vary wildly, so a “70” means very different things at different bureaus.

Experian Intelliscore Plus

Intelliscore Plus produces a number from 0 to 100, where lower means higher risk. The model draws from more than 800 commercial and owner variables — trade payment data, collection accounts, credit inquiries, public filings, and financial ratios — and predicts the likelihood that a business will go 90 or more days late on a payment within the next 12 months.³

Experian breaks the range into five risk tiers:⁴

76 to 100 is low risk. Lenders and suppliers are most comfortable offering favorable terms here.
51 to 75 is low to medium risk. Generally healthy, with some payment inconsistencies or thin file history.
26 to 50 is medium risk. Expect higher interest rates or collateral requirements.
11 to 25 is medium to high risk. Significant payment issues or negative public records are likely.
1 to 10 is high risk. Most traditional lenders will decline applications in this range.

Because the model looks 12 months ahead, it reacts quickly to changes in payment behavior. A business that starts paying late will see its score drop within a reporting cycle or two, and consistent on-time payments across six to twelve months often produce measurable gains.

Equifax Business Credit Risk Score

Equifax runs from 101 to 992, with higher scores indicating lower risk of serious delinquency. Payment history carries the heaviest weight: how quickly you pay suppliers, whether you stay within agreed terms, and how consistently you’ve paid on time over the past one to two years.

Beyond payment history, Equifax considers credit utilization, public records like tax liens and bankruptcies, the depth and age of your credit file, and your industry classification. Businesses in volatile or seasonal industries can see scores adjusted for that higher baseline risk. A thin credit file with fewer than five reporting trade lines can also hold a score down even when every payment has been on time.

Dun and Bradstreet PAYDEX

PAYDEX is a payment-based index from 1 to 100, with 100 the best possible performance. It’s built almost entirely on payment history — specifically, a weighted average of how your business paid its bills over the past 12 months.⁵ The three tiers are simple:

80 to 100 is low risk. The business pays on time or early.
50 to 79 is moderate risk. Payments are occasionally late or inconsistent.
0 to 49 is high risk. The business regularly pays late, suggesting cash flow trouble.

A PAYDEX of 80 means you’re paying right at terms. Scores above 80 indicate you’re paying ahead of schedule — a net-30 invoice paid on day 20, for example. Because the score tracks payment speed so directly, it’s the easiest of the three to improve quickly by accelerating payments to vendors who report to D&B.⁵

To appear in D&B’s system at all, your business needs a D-U-N-S Number, a unique nine-digit identifier. Applying is free and doesn’t require buying any product.⁶ You provide the legal business name, address, phone number, owner name, legal structure, and number of employees. Standard processing takes up to 30 business days; expedited service costs extra and runs about eight business days. Check D&B’s lookup tool first, because many businesses get assigned a number automatically through supplier or lender reporting.

What Actually Feeds the Scores

Trade Credit

Trade credit is the backbone of business scoring. When you buy supplies on net-30 terms and pay in 20 days, that positive payment gets reported. When you pay 15 days late, that gets reported too. The catch is that not every vendor reports to every bureau, and many small suppliers don’t report at all. A business can have an excellent payment record that stays invisible to one or more bureaus simply because its vendors don’t participate.

Public Records

UCC filings, tax liens, and civil judgments all appear on business credit reports. A UCC filing is a public notice that a creditor has a legal interest in specific business assets used as collateral.⁷ Filings aren’t inherently negative — they just reflect secured financing — but an accumulation can signal heavy leverage. A standard UCC financing statement remains effective for five years before it lapses.⁸ Tax liens and court judgments are unambiguously negative and drag scores down at every bureau.

Company Demographics

Business age, industry classification, employee count, and corporate structure all factor in. A two-year-old restaurant and a twenty-year-old accounting firm with identical payment histories won’t produce identical scores, because the models account for industry risk and the statistical reliability of a longer track record. You can’t make your business older, which is why newer companies often start with middling scores despite clean payment behavior.

How to Build Business Credit

Building from scratch follows a sequence, and skipping steps is where most owners lose time.

Separate your business identity. Get an Employer Identification Number from the IRS, form a legal entity such as an LLC or corporation, and open a dedicated business bank account. Without this separation, commercial activity gets tangled with your personal credit instead of building an independent business profile.
Get a D-U-N-S Number so your business exists in D&B’s system. It’s free and takes up to 30 business days.⁶
Open trade accounts that report. Not all vendors report to the bureaus. Ask directly whether a supplier reports to Experian, Equifax, or D&B. Office supply companies, shipping accounts, and business-to-business vendors are common starting points.
Apply for a business credit card that reports to commercial bureaus. Pay the balance on time and keep utilization below 30% of the limit.
Pay early when you can. For PAYDEX especially, paying before the due date pushes your score above 80. At the other bureaus, early payment signals strong cash flow management.

The chicken-and-egg problem is real: you need credit accounts to build a score, but many creditors want to see a score before they’ll extend credit. Net-30 vendor accounts and a secured business card break the cycle. Expect six to twelve months before your track record is thick enough for the scores to become meaningful.

Checking Your Business Credit Reports

To pull your own report you’ll need your business’s legal name as registered with the Secretary of State, your physical address, and your federal Employer Identification Number.⁹ For D&B, you’ll also need your D-U-N-S Number. Having this ready prevents you from accidentally buying a report for a similarly named company.

Each bureau charges separately, and pricing depends on how much detail you want. Experian sells individual reports from $12.95 for a basic verification up to $69.95 for a full ProfilePlus report, with annual monitoring subscriptions starting at $199 per year.¹⁰ Equifax offers a one-time business credit report download for $49.99, with monthly monitoring from $39.99.¹¹ Budget accordingly if you plan to monitor all three, because there is no free annual report the way there is on the consumer side.²

Disputing Errors

Errors are worth catching because there’s no seven-year clock forcing them off your file. Check reports at least once a year, and always before applying for financing.

For Experian, review your report, identify the specific items you believe are inaccurate, and submit a dispute through the online form linked at the bottom of the report or by emailing the report and a description of the errors to Experian’s business disputes team.¹² Investigations usually complete within 30 days, and if corrections are made you’ll get a complimentary updated report by email. To update basic information like your address or industry code, an authorized officer can make changes directly through Experian’s business credit facts portal.

Equifax handles disputes through its customer service line and online portal, and D&B allows disputes through its credit management tools. In every case, be specific and bring documentation: a paid invoice, a lien release, or proof of a corrected filing. Vague complaints won’t trigger an investigation. You have to point to a specific trade line or public record and explain why the reported data doesn’t match reality.

A Note on SBA Loans and the FICO SBSS

If you’re researching business credit because of an SBA loan application, one recent change is worth knowing. The FICO Small Business Scoring Service, which runs 0 to 300 and blends personal credit, business credit, and financial statements, used to be required for SBA 7(a) small loan pre-screening. The SBA sunset that requirement effective March 1, 2026.¹³ Lenders now perform their own credit analysis, including a minimum 1.1:1 debt service coverage ratio and a review of recent bank statements, and internal scoring models can’t rely solely on consumer credit scores. Some lenders may still pull an SBSS score as part of their own review, but it’s no longer a regulatory gate.

1
Federal Trade Commission. Fair Credit Reporting Act
2
Federal Trade Commission. Free Credit Reports
3
Experian. Intelliscore Plus Product Sheet
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Experian. Risk Ranking/Recommendation – Experian Business
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Dun & Bradstreet. Business Credit Scores and Ratings
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Dun & Bradstreet. Get a D-U-N-S Number
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National Association of Secretaries of State. UCC Filings
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Legal Information Institute. UCC 9-515 – Duration and Effectiveness of Financing Statement
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U.S. Small Business Administration. What Makes Up a Small Business Credit Report
10
Experian. Products and Pricing – Business Credit Reports and Scores
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Equifax. Business Credit Reports for Small Business
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Experian. Business Credit Information – How to Correct or Dispute Business Credit Report Items
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U.S. Small Business Administration. Sunset of SBSS Score for 7(a) Small Loans