A FICO score is a three-digit number between 300 and 850 that predicts how likely you are to fall at least 90 days behind on a payment within the next two years. Fair Isaac Corporation built the algorithm, and most U.S. lenders rely on some version of it when deciding whether to approve you for a credit card, auto loan, or mortgage, and what interest rate to charge. The score is calculated entirely from the information on your credit reports at Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. Nothing else feeds it. Here is how the number is built, what the tiers mean, and why the score your banking app shows may not match the one your lender pulls.
How Your FICO Score Is Calculated
Every FICO model weighs the same five categories, though the exact emphasis shifts a little between versions. In the standard base model, the weights break down like this:1myFICO. What’s in my FICO Scores
- Payment history — 35%. Whether you pay on time matters more than anything else. Late payments, collections, and bankruptcies all live here. A single 30-day late payment can drop a high score by 60 to 100 points, and negative marks stay on your report for seven years (ten for bankruptcies).2Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. A Summary of Your Rights Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act
- Amounts owed — 30%. This is mostly about credit utilization: your revolving balances compared to your credit limits. A $7,000 balance on a $10,000 limit reads as potential overextension. Lower is better, and people with the highest scores tend to keep utilization in the single digits. Balances on installment loans like car notes count too, but less heavily.
- Length of credit history — 15%. The age of your oldest account, your newest account, and the average across all accounts. Closing an old card can shorten that average and cost you points.
- New credit — 10%. Opening several accounts in a short window signals higher risk, especially if your credit file is thin. Each hard inquiry from a new application can lower your score by five to ten points.
- Credit mix — 10%. Experience with different types of credit, such as revolving cards and installment loans, helps. It’s the smallest factor, so opening a new type of account just to diversify rarely makes sense.
What the Score Ignores
Your income has zero influence on your FICO score. This catches people off guard, but the algorithm only looks at how you manage credit, not how much money you make. Your employment history, job title, and salary are all irrelevant to the calculation.3myFICO. 9 Factors That Have No Influence on Your FICO Scores
Federal law also prohibits credit scores from factoring in race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, or receipt of public assistance. Beyond those protected categories, FICO ignores your age, your address, and whether you’ve been denied credit in the past. Prepaid debit cards don’t show up on credit reports, so using one won’t help or hurt. Enrollment in credit counseling has no effect on the score by itself.
What the Numbers Mean
The base FICO score runs from 300 to 850. FICO groups the range into five tiers that lenders use as rough benchmarks for approval and pricing. The average score among U.S. consumers sits around 715, near the middle of the Good range.4myFICO. FICO Score Explained: Models, Versions, and Ranges
- Exceptional (800–850). The lowest-risk tier. Best available rates and highest credit limits. Reaching this level generally requires a long credit history, very low utilization, and no recent negative marks.
- Very Good (740–799). Well above average. Near-top-tier rates, and approval for most products is straightforward.
- Good (670–739). Around the national average. Most standard credit products are accessible, though rates won’t be as favorable as those offered higher up.
- Fair (580–669). Below average. Approval becomes harder, rates climb, and lenders may require collateral or impose lower limits.
- Poor (300–579). Indicates serious past credit problems such as multiple collections, bankruptcies, or frequent missed payments. Unsecured credit is difficult to obtain; borrowers in this range are often limited to secured cards or high-interest subprime products.
What Each Tier Actually Costs You
Those tier labels aren’t just sorting bins. They translate directly into the interest rate you pay, and the dollar differences are significant. On a $350,000, 30-year fixed mortgage as of early 2026, a borrower with a score of 760 or above could expect a rate around 6.25%, while someone at 620 would face roughly 7.14%. A gap of about 0.9 percentage points works out to tens of thousands of dollars over the life of the loan.
Auto loans show steeper penalties. Top-tier borrowers pay around 5% to 6% on a new car loan; someone in the subprime range of roughly 500 to 600 can see rates above 13% for a new car and close to 19% for a used one. The difference between a 5% and a 13% rate on a $30,000, five-year car loan adds more than $7,000 in interest. Your FICO score is, in very real terms, a price tag on credit.
How Inquiries and Rate Shopping Affect Your Score
Not every credit check hits your score. A soft inquiry happens when you check your own credit, when a lender pre-screens you for a promotional offer, or when an employer runs a background check. Soft inquiries never affect your score.5myFICO. How Soft vs Hard Pull Credit Inquiries Work
A hard inquiry occurs when you actively apply for credit and the lender pulls your report. Each one can lower your score by roughly five to ten points and stays on your report for two years, though FICO only counts hard inquiries from the last 12 months in the score itself.
Rate shopping is treated differently. If you’re comparing mortgage, auto, or student loan offers, FICO groups multiple inquiries for the same loan type into a single inquiry as long as they fall within a set window. Newer FICO versions give you 45 days; older versions allow 14. Any mortgage, auto, or student loan inquiries from the past 30 days are also ignored while you’re still shopping. Doing your homework isn’t supposed to punish you.6myFICO. How to Rate Shop and Minimize the Impact to Your FICO Scores
Why the Score You See May Not Match the Score a Lender Uses
FICO periodically updates its scoring model, but older versions don’t disappear when a new one launches. Lenders adopt new versions at their own pace, so the score your credit card company shows you can come from a different FICO version than the one your mortgage lender pulls. The bureau supplying the data also matters, because your report at Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion isn’t identical.
FICO 8
FICO 8 remains the most widely used base version for general lending decisions. It penalizes high credit card utilization more aggressively than earlier models and ignores collection accounts where the original balance was under $100. Most scores you see through banking apps or free credit monitoring services are FICO 8.7myFICO. FICO Score Types: Why Multiple Versions Matter for You
FICO 9
FICO 9 changed how collections are handled. Medical debts in collections carry less weight than other types, and once any collection account is paid off, FICO 9 ignores it entirely rather than continuing to penalize you.8FICO. FICO Score 9 Introduces Refined Analysis of Medical Collections
FICO 10 and 10T
The FICO 10 Suite is the newest generation. Standard FICO 10 penalizes late payments more heavily than FICO 8 and pays closer attention to personal loan usage: if you consolidated card debt into a personal loan and then ran the card balances back up, FICO 10 catches that pattern. FICO 10T adds trended data, meaning it analyzes your credit behavior over a rolling period rather than a single monthly snapshot. Someone who pays off their balance in full each month looks very different under 10T than someone whose balance is quietly growing, even if both show the same utilization on the day of the pull.9FICO. Where Things Stand for FICO Score 10T in the Conforming Mortgage Market
Industry-Specific Scores
FICO also produces specialized scores tuned to specific lending products. The FICO Auto Score emphasizes your history with vehicle loans; the FICO Bankcard Score puts extra weight on credit card management. These industry versions use a wider range of 250 to 900, giving lenders more granularity for pricing within their market. You might carry a base FICO 8 of 700 but see a FICO Auto Score of 720 if your car payment history is particularly clean.10myFICO. FICO Score Versions
Mortgage Scoring
Mortgage lending has long been an outlier. For decades, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac required lenders to use legacy models that predated FICO 8: Score 2 at Experian, Score 5 at Equifax, and Score 4 at TransUnion. That’s why your mortgage-qualifying score can differ noticeably from the number your bank shows you. Under the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s current interim phase, approved lenders can choose between Classic FICO and VantageScore 4.0 on loans sold to the Enterprises, and FICO 10T is validated but not yet available for lender use.11Federal Housing Finance Agency. Credit Scores
FICO vs. VantageScore
If a free app shows one number and a lender quotes another, one common explanation is that the app is showing a VantageScore, not a FICO score. VantageScore was created in 2006 by the three major bureaus as a competitor to FICO. It uses the same 300-to-850 range, which makes the two easy to confuse.
The differences matter. FICO requires at least one account that’s six months old and recent activity within the past six months before it can generate a score. VantageScore can score you with just one account, even a newer one. FICO’s rate-shopping window runs 45 days in newer versions; VantageScore uses 14. VantageScore 4.0 ignores all paid collection accounts and all unpaid medical collections regardless of balance, while FICO 8 still counts unpaid medical collections the same as any other debt. FICO remains the dominant model for lending decisions, so when you see a score in a banking app, check the fine print for which model produced it.
How to Check Your Score and Fix Weak Spots
Federal law entitles you to a free credit report from each of the three major bureaus through AnnualCreditReport.com. As of 2026, the three bureaus offer free weekly access to reports through that site, and Equifax provides six additional free reports per year on top of that.12Federal Trade Commission. Free Credit Reports
A credit report is not the same as a credit score. The report shows the raw data; the score is the number calculated from it. Many banks and credit card issuers provide a free FICO score to their customers, usually a FICO 8 based on one bureau’s data. The myFICO website sells access to all your FICO scores across all three bureaus, including industry-specific and mortgage versions. If you’re preparing for a major purchase like a home, checking your scores well in advance gives you time to address problems before a lender pulls the number that matters.
Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act and the Dodd-Frank Act, a lender who uses a credit score to deny your application or offer you less favorable terms must send you an adverse action notice. The notice must include the specific score used, the range of possible scores, and the key factors that hurt your result.13Federal Reserve Board. Federal Reserve and FTC Issue Final Rules to Implement the Credit Score Disclosure Requirements of the Dodd-Frank Act
Those notices are more useful than most people realize. The four or five “reason codes” listed tell you exactly what the algorithm flagged as your weakest areas. If the top reason is “proportion of balances to credit limits is too high,” utilization is your biggest problem. If it’s “too few accounts currently paid as agreed,” late payments are the drag. Treat those codes as a repair checklist and you’re targeting the factors that will move your score the most.