How Far Back Can You Get Your Credit History: 7- and 10-Year Rules

Your credit history can go back as far as your oldest open account has been reporting, which for many people means decades. Closed accounts in good standing generally stay on your report for about ten years after they close, and most negative items must come off after seven years under federal law. Bankruptcy is the main exception, with a ten-year ceiling. Everything on your file is visible to you for free every week at AnnualCreditReport.com.¹

Positive Accounts: No Fixed End Date

An open account you’re paying on time can stay on your credit report indefinitely. There’s no expiration on active, positive tradelines. A credit card you opened in college is still sitting in your file, adding length to your credit history for as long as the lender keeps reporting it.²

Once an account in good standing closes, the record doesn’t disappear right away. The three national bureaus keep closed positive accounts for up to ten years from the date they were last reported.³ During those years the on-time payment history and the account’s age keep supporting your file. Closing an old account doesn’t wipe out its history overnight.

The Seven-Year Rule for Negative Items

Federal law sets a hard ceiling on how long most bad marks can stay. Under 15 U.S.C. § 1681c, credit bureaus generally cannot report derogatory information that’s more than seven years old.⁴ That covers:

Late payments, each one aging off individually from its own date.
Collection accounts, where the clock starts 180 days after the first missed payment that led to the collection, not the date the debt was sold.
Foreclosures and short sales, timed from the first delinquency on the mortgage.
Charged-off accounts, dropping off seven years after the original delinquency date.

The 180-day rule for collections matters because debt buyers sometimes try to restart the clock by re-reporting an old debt. They can’t. The statute anchors the reporting period to the original missed payment, not any later transfer or activity.⁴

Bankruptcy: Up to Ten Years

Bankruptcy sits on your report longer. The statute allows a filing to appear for up to ten years from the date the court entered the order for relief.⁴ In practice the bureaus split by chapter. A Chapter 7, which wipes out most debts, stays the full ten years. A Chapter 13, where you completed a repayment plan, is typically removed after seven. The shorter window on Chapter 13 is bureau policy rather than a statutory rule.

Hard Inquiries: Two Years

When a lender pulls your credit for an application, that hard inquiry stays visible for two years. The scoring impact is smaller than most people assume and fades within roughly twelve months. Multiple inquiries for the same type of loan within a short shopping window, such as a mortgage search, are usually grouped and treated as a single inquiry for scoring.

Civil Judgments and Tax Liens: Mostly Gone

The statute allows civil judgments for seven years or the governing statute of limitations, whichever is longer.⁴ In practice, almost all civil judgments and roughly half of tax liens came off credit reports starting in mid-2017, when the three bureaus adopted stricter matching standards that require a Social Security number or date of birth to link a public record to a file. Most court records don’t carry that information, so civil judgments now rarely appear on modern reports and tax liens are far less common than they used to be.

Medical Debt Follows Different Rules

Medical collections don’t behave like other collection accounts. Under voluntary policies the three major bureaus adopted in 2022, medical debt doesn’t appear on your report until it has been delinquent for at least one year, paid medical debts are removed entirely, and unpaid medical debts under $500 are excluded from reports altogether. Those changes cleared billions of dollars in medical collections out of consumer files.

A CFPB rule finalized in January 2025 would have gone further and banned medical debt from credit reports used in lending. A federal court vacated that rule in July 2025, so it never took effect. The bureau policies remain in place but are voluntary, and some states have begun passing their own medical debt reporting laws, so protections vary by location.

When Old Negatives Can Come Back Into View

The seven-year limit has three exceptions written into the statute, and the dollar thresholds haven’t been adjusted since the Fair Credit Reporting Act was enacted, so they catch more people today than they once did.⁴ A report pulled for any of the following can legally include older negative information:

Credit transactions of $150,000 or more.
Life insurance underwriting with a face value of $150,000 or more.
Employment consideration for a position paying $75,000 or more annually.

A $150,000 mortgage was unusual when the law was written. Today it’s below the median home price in much of the country.

How To See What’s on Your File

You can pull a free report from Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion once per week through AnnualCreditReport.com. Weekly access is now permanent, upgraded from the original annual entitlement.¹ Checking your own report is a soft inquiry and has no effect on your score.

You can also request reports by phone at 1-877-322-8228 or by mail using the Annual Credit Report Request Form sent to Annual Credit Report Request Service, P.O. Box 105281, Atlanta, GA 30348-5281; those channels deliver within 15 days.⁵ To verify your identity through any channel, you’ll need your full legal name, Social Security number, date of birth, current address, and any addresses you’ve used in the past two years.

What To Do About Items That Should Be Gone

If a negative item is still showing up past its expiration, or if something on the report is wrong, you can dispute it directly with the bureau. The bureau generally has 30 days to investigate, extended to 45 days if you filed the dispute after receiving your free annual report, and it must notify you of the results within five business days after finishing.⁶

If the bureau or the furnisher can’t verify the disputed item within that window, it has to come off. You don’t have to prove the item is wrong; the other side has to prove it’s right. Include supporting documents when you have them, such as statements, payment receipts, or discharge papers, and send the dispute both to the bureau and to the company that reported the information. Written disputes with a paper trail are easier to escalate later than online-only submissions.⁷

1
Federal Trade Commission. You Now Have Permanent Access to Free Weekly Credit Reports
2
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. How Long Does Information Stay on My Credit Report
3
Equifax. How Long Does Information Stay on My Equifax Credit Report
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681c – Requirements Relating to Information Contained in Consumer Reports
5
Federal Trade Commission. Free Credit Reports
6
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. How Long Does It Take to Repair an Error on a Credit Report
7
USAGov. Dispute Errors on Your Credit Report