A FICO score is built from five categories of information pulled from your credit reports, each weighted differently: payment history counts for 35%, amounts owed for 30%, length of credit history for 15%, new credit for 10%, and credit mix for 10%. The score itself runs from 300 to 850, and small movements between tiers can change both whether you’re approved and the interest rate you’re offered.
The 300 to 850 Scale
Lenders read your three-digit number as a shorthand for risk. The tiers break down like this:
- Exceptional, 800 to 850: qualifies for the best rates and terms on virtually every credit product.
- Very good, 740 to 799: still earns highly competitive rates, and most lenders treat this tier nearly as favorably as exceptional.
- Good, 670 to 739: an acceptable risk to most lenders, though rates start climbing.
- Fair, 580 to 669: approval is still possible for many products, usually at higher rates and lower limits.
- Poor, 300 to 579: approval is difficult and typically limited to secured cards or subprime loans.
The gap between tiers has real money attached to it. On a conventional 30-year fixed mortgage in early 2026, a borrower around 840 averaged 6.20% while a borrower around 620 averaged 7.17%. On a $300,000 loan, that spread adds up to tens of thousands of dollars in interest over the life of the loan.
Payment History: 35%
Payment history carries more weight than any other factor because past repayment behavior is the strongest predictor of future repayment. The model tracks on-time payments across every reported account, including credit cards, mortgages, auto loans, and student loans. When you do slip, severity matters. A payment that’s 30 days late hurts less than one that’s 60 or 90 days overdue, and far less than an account that ends up in collections.
Late payments stay on your credit report for up to seven years from the date of the original delinquency, even if you later bring the account current. That clock runs per occurrence, so a string of missed payments creates several negative marks with their own seven-year timers. A collection account, once your creditor sells the debt to a third-party collector, appears as a separate negative entry for up to seven years of its own.
Bankruptcy is the harshest hit in this category. A Chapter 13 filing stays on your report for seven years from the filing date; a Chapter 7 filing stays for ten. Foreclosures also stay for seven years. Civil judgments and tax liens were removed from credit reports by the major bureaus in 2017 and 2018, respectively, and no longer factor into FICO calculations.
Medical Debt Follows Different Rules
Medical bills are treated more leniently than other debts. The three national bureaus voluntarily agreed to keep medical debt off your report while it’s less than a year old, giving you time to resolve insurance disputes. Medical debts under $500 are excluded entirely, even in collections. The CFPB tried to remove all medical debt from credit reports through a 2024 rule, but a federal court vacated that rule in July 2025, so the voluntary bureau policies are the current floor of protection.
Amounts Owed: 30%
This category is mostly about your credit utilization ratio, which measures how much of your available revolving credit you’re actually using. A $3,000 balance on a card with a $10,000 limit is 30% utilization. FICO looks at each card individually and at your revolving accounts in aggregate.
Lower utilization signals that you’re not stretched. Staying under about 10% is generally associated with the strongest scores in this category. Running balances up near your limits suggests the opposite. Utilization is one of the fastest-moving parts of your score because it updates every time your card issuer reports a new balance, usually once per billing cycle.
Installment loans are evaluated here, too, but differently. FICO compares your current balance to the original loan amount to gauge repayment progress. A mortgage where you’ve paid off 60% of the principal looks better than one you’ve barely touched. Carrying balances on many accounts at once can also work against you.
Bringing Utilization Down
Paying balances down is the most direct fix. Requesting a higher limit on an existing card achieves the same math: a $3,000 balance against a $20,000 limit is 15% utilization instead of 30%. Some issuers process limit-increase requests with a soft pull that doesn’t touch your score; others run a hard inquiry. Ask before you apply.
Being added as an authorized user on someone else’s account with a high limit and low balance can also help, because that account’s limit folds into your total available credit. The risk is that if the primary cardholder runs up a balance or misses a payment, those negatives land on your report too.
Length of Credit History: 15%
Three time-based measurements feed this category: the age of your oldest account, the age of your newest account, and the average age across all accounts. A longer track record gives FICO more data, and more data generally means a higher score here. Someone with 20 years of history is statistically more predictable than someone with two.
The model also checks how recently you’ve used specific accounts. An older card that still sees occasional activity shows ongoing, stable management. A dormant card provides less useful data, and some issuers will close inactive accounts on their own, which can shorten your credit history and raise your utilization ratio at the same time.
That’s why closing an old account deserves a second thought. Shutting down a long-held card can pull down your average account age and shrink your total available credit, both of which push your score in the wrong direction. If the card has no annual fee, keeping it open with a small recurring charge is often the smarter move.
New Credit: 10%
Every formal application for a loan or credit card generates a hard inquiry when the lender pulls your report. A single hard inquiry knocks off fewer than five points for most people, and the effect fades within a year. Opening several accounts in a short window can signal financial distress, and the cumulative impact of multiple inquiries is larger than any one alone. Hard inquiries stay visible for two years, though FICO only weighs them during the first twelve months.
Not every credit check is a hard inquiry. Checking your own score, pre-qualification offers, employer background checks, and insurance underwriting all produce soft inquiries that don’t affect your score. You can shop for pre-qualification offers freely.
Rate Shopping Is Protected
FICO treats comparison shopping for a mortgage, auto loan, or student loan as a single event. Multiple hard inquiries for the same loan type within a 14- to 45-day window count as one inquiry for scoring purposes. In the most common scoring models, inquiries for these loan types in the 30 days before your score is calculated don’t count at all. The protection only applies to the same type of loan; a mortgage application and a car loan application in the same week count separately.
Credit Mix: 10%
This category rewards you for managing different types of credit. FICO distinguishes revolving accounts like credit cards from installment accounts like mortgages, auto loans, and student loans. A profile with both suggests experience across repayment structures. Credit-card-only borrowers can still reach a good score, but a broader mix can give you an edge when you’re pushing into a higher tier.
Because credit mix carries the least weight of the five factors, it’s never worth taking on debt you don’t need just to diversify. If you already have a car loan or student loans, that side of the ledger is handled. Mix mostly matters as a tiebreaker at the margins.
Which FICO Version Your Lender Uses
There isn’t one FICO score. FICO licenses dozens of models, and different industries lean on different versions. FICO Score 8 is the most widely used general-purpose version, but specific decisions often run on industry-tuned models.
- Mortgages currently use older versions: FICO Score 2 (Experian), FICO Score 4 (TransUnion), and FICO Score 5 (Equifax). The Federal Housing Finance Agency has directed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to eventually require both FICO 10T and VantageScore 4.0 on the loans they buy, but there’s no firm deadline for the full rollout.
- Auto lenders often use FICO Auto Score versions such as Auto Score 8 or 9, calibrated to predict default risk on vehicle financing.
- Card issuers may use FICO Bankcard Score versions or the general FICO Score 8 or 9.
FICO 10T is the newest model worth knowing about. Earlier versions look at a snapshot of your most recent balances; FICO 10T analyzes 24 months of trended data. Steadily declining balances read as positive momentum. Balances creeping upward while you make minimum payments get flagged, too. When mortgage lenders eventually adopt this model, borrowers who consistently pay down balances will benefit the most.
Checking Your Report and Disputing Errors
You can pull your credit report from Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion for free every week at AnnualCreditReport.com. The bureaus made the weekly-access program permanent, and through 2026, Equifax is offering an additional six free reports per year on top of that. These reports show you all the data feeding your score, though you generally need to pay a small fee or use a free monitoring service to see the actual FICO number.
Errors on credit reports are common, and a wrong late-payment notation or an account that isn’t yours can drag your score down for years if you don’t catch it. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, you have the right to dispute inaccurate information directly with the credit bureau. Once you file a dispute, the bureau generally has 30 days to investigate and five business days after that to notify you of the result. If you submit additional supporting documents during the investigation, the bureau may take up to 45 days total.