Consumers are entitled by law to a free credit report—which is simply a record of your borrowing and repayment history—but the numerical scores derived from these reports will cost you, in part because credit-reporting agencies aren’t required by law to provide them for free to consumers along with the reports.
Now, a handful of companies are launching services that give consumers at least a glimpse at their credit scores free of charge. The sites—Credit.com Inc., Credit Karma Inc.’s CreditKarma.com and Quizzle.com—also offer a window into the key factors that go into calculating your score, what you can do to improve them and how your credit stacks up against others. Last week, for example, Credit.com launched a free Credit Report Card that shows consumers how they’re likely to rate across five credit-scoring models.
