What Are Soft Inquiries and Do They Hurt Your Credit?

Soft inquiries on your credit report have no effect on your credit score. Every major scoring model, including FICO and VantageScore, ignores them completely.¹ A soft inquiry is any credit check that isn’t attached to a formal application for new credit: a card issuer screening you for a promotional offer, an employer running a background check, an insurer setting your premium, or you pulling your own file. You can rack up dozens of them without losing a single point.

What Makes an Inquiry Soft

A soft inquiry is a check that pulls data from your credit file for a reason other than deciding whether to lend you money.² Because you haven’t asked anyone to extend credit, the inquiry is treated as an administrative event, not a signal of financial risk.

The line gets blurry around pre-qualification. When a lender checks your credit to tell you whether you’d likely qualify for a card or loan, that first screening is a soft pull. If you then submit a formal application based on the offer, the lender runs a hard inquiry to make the actual decision.³ Pre-qualification is soft. Applying is hard.

What Triggers a Soft Inquiry

Soft inquiries land on your report for a range of reasons. Some you set in motion, others happen without any action on your part.

Checking your own credit through a monitoring service or directly from a bureau. You can do this as often as you like.²
Pre-screened offers, where card companies and lenders review basic credit data to decide who gets a promotional mailer.¹
Employer background checks. Federal law requires the employer to get your written permission first.⁴
Insurance underwriting. Insurers generate a credit-based insurance score to help set premiums; it doesn’t touch your lending score. About 43 states and Washington, D.C. allow this practice, while other states restrict or prohibit it.⁵
Account reviews by existing creditors, who periodically pull your credit to confirm you still meet the terms of your account. You won’t get a notification.¹
Utility service setup, where a gas, electric, or water company checks your credit to decide whether to require a security deposit.⁶
Tenant screening by a landlord evaluating your rental application, since a lease isn’t a form of credit.⁶

One caveat on rental screening: some landlords use third-party services that run a hard pull instead. If you’re asked to apply through an outside portal, ask which type of check they use before authorizing it.

Why Scoring Models Ignore Them

Credit scores predict one thing: how likely you are to fall behind on a debt payment. A soft inquiry tells the model nothing about that. You didn’t ask for money, so the check doesn’t suggest you’re stretching yourself thin.²

FICO scores weigh five categories: payment history (35%), amounts owed (30%), length of credit history (15%), new credit (10%), and credit mix (10%).⁷ Inquiries only show up inside the “new credit” slice, and only hard inquiries count there. Soft inquiries aren’t downweighted. They’re invisible to the formula.¹

You can check your own credit daily, get pre-qualified for a dozen cards to compare offers, and let your auto insurer pull your file at renewal without losing a single point.

Who Can See Your Soft Inquiries

Only you can. When a bank or lender pulls your report to evaluate a loan application, the soft inquiry section is hidden. They see hard inquiries, account histories, and balances. They don’t see who screened you for promotional offers or how often you’ve checked your own file.¹

This separation is built into federal law. The Fair Credit Reporting Act bars credit bureaus from sharing records of inquiries tied to transactions you didn’t initiate, such as pre-screened offers, with other creditors. The same law requires bureaus to disclose those inquiry records to you on request, covering employment-related inquiries for the past two years and all other inquiries for the past year.⁸

All inquiries, soft and hard, stay on your report for two years from the date they occur.⁹ After that, they drop off automatically. Since soft entries don’t carry scoring weight, there’s no benefit to trying to remove them early.

How Hard Inquiries Differ

Hard inquiries do show up in scoring calculations because they signal that you’re actively seeking new debt. The impact is usually smaller than people expect: a single hard inquiry typically costs fewer than five points on a FICO score, and the effect fades within about 12 months. The record stays on your report for two years, but only the first year matters for scoring.¹⁰ Both major scoring models also treat multiple lender pulls during rate shopping as a single inquiry when they fall within a short window.¹¹

How to Review Your Report

You can pull your credit report from each of the three major bureaus (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion) once per week for free at AnnualCreditReport.com. That free weekly access is now permanent.¹²

Look for the inquiry section, sometimes labeled “requests for your credit history.” You’ll see two lists: hard inquiries visible to lenders, and soft inquiries visible only to you. Scan both. A soft entry from a company you don’t recognize is usually a pre-screened offer or a routine review by an existing creditor. An unrecognized hard inquiry deserves a closer look.

Stopping Promotional Soft Pulls

If pre-approved credit card mailers bother you, you can shut down the soft inquiries that produce them. The three major bureaus operate a shared service at OptOutPrescreen.com, or by phone at 1-888-567-8688, with two options:¹³

A five-year opt-out you can submit online or by phone. It takes effect within a few days, though offers already in the mail pipeline may keep arriving for a few weeks.
A permanent opt-out that starts online or by phone and finishes when you sign and mail back the Permanent Opt-Out Election form. Without the signed form, the request defaults to five years.

You’ll provide your name, address, Social Security number, and date of birth. That information is used only to process the request. Opting out doesn’t affect your credit score or your ability to apply for credit yourself.

Disputing an Inquiry You Don’t Recognize

An unfamiliar soft inquiry is rarely worth chasing, since it doesn’t touch your score. An unfamiliar hard inquiry is different. It could mean someone applied for credit in your name, or it could be a creditor’s data-entry mistake.

File a dispute directly with the credit bureau that shows the inquiry. You can do this through each bureau’s online dispute portal or by mailing a letter that identifies the inquiry, explains why you believe it’s unauthorized, and includes any supporting documents. The bureau must investigate and report its findings back to you.¹⁴ Contact the company that ran the inquiry as well; it’s required to investigate within 30 days of receiving your dispute.

If the bureau doesn’t resolve the issue to your satisfaction, you can submit a complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. If the inquiry turns out to be tied to identity theft, placing a fraud alert or credit freeze with all three bureaus is a sensible next step to block further unauthorized access.

1
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. What Is a Credit Inquiry?
2
Experian. What Is a Soft Inquiry?
3
Experian. Prequalified vs. Preapproved: What’s the Difference?
4
Federal Trade Commission. Using Consumer Reports: What Employers Need to Know
5
Experian. Do Car Insurance Quotes Affect Your Credit Score
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TransUnion. Hard vs Soft Inquiries: Different Credit Checks
7
myFICO. How Scores Are Calculated
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681g – Disclosures to Consumers
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U.S. Small Business Administration. Credit Inquiries: What You Should Know About Hard and Soft Pulls
10
myFICO. How New Credit Impacts Your Credit Score
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myFICO. The Timing of Hard Credit Inquiries: When and Why They Matter
12
Federal Trade Commission. Free Credit Reports
13
Federal Trade Commission. What To Know About Prescreened Offers for Credit and Insurance
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Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. How Do I Dispute an Error on My Credit Report?