AMEX Once Again Offering Free FICO Scores

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Back in the day, AMEX used to offer free FICO scores to cardholders, but that ended around 2015 when they switched to providing a FAKO Vantage score.

Lenders typically check your FICO score and FAKO scores can vary wildly from FICO scores, making them less than useful.

I wrote yesterday about Discover offering their cardholders free FICO scores, namely the TransUnion FICO Score 8.

A commenter noted that AMEX now provides FICO scores as well. I guess I’ve been living under a rock, because sure enough it seems that AMEX has quietly switched back to providing FICO scores. In my account, I can now see my Experian FICO Score 8.

Cardholders can login to their AMEX account and view their FICO score here.

Oh the hits we take for juicy new card offers…

Citi rounds out the Big 3 credit reporting agencies by providing cardholders with the Equifax FICO Score 8, but they provide a Bankcard version of the FICO score, which has a scale or 900 points instead of the standard 850 points provided by the regular FICO Score 8. That makes it somewhat less useful than the AMEX and Discover offerings.

Because Citi likes to be different:

More important then keeping track of your score, is regularly checking your credit report for mistakes or fraud. You can check your Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion reports for free every week on AnnualCreditReport.com.

You can read more in this post about what comprises your credit score and how to improve your score.

Do you stay on top of your credit report and score?

HT: ShimshonK

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32 Comments On "AMEX Once Again Offering Free FICO Scores"

All opinions expressed below are user generated and the opinions aren’t provided, reviewed or endorsed by any advertiser or DansDeals.

S

Btw, it’s not particularly new, definitely been many months, maybe even a couple years.

Darrell Martinsen

Wow those are great scores! Congrats!
I just hit 801 for the first time so I’m pretty excited too

lcm

Interesting to note that discover used to offer free scores to anyone, but recently they limited that only to card holders

MosheD

T4

Old

This was a few months ago. They sent an email detailing the switch.
It’s very detailed in what they provide.

kmc

Free!? You get what you pay for….

I prefer to pay for a premium FICO which includes a guaranteed 800+.

Y

Wow Dan what a score!!
How is it possible that inquires for all new card bonuses don’t reflect hard on your score?

GUWonder

Business credit cards don’t “reflect hard” on the score from what I’ve seen. Also, new personal credit cards may hit the score very briefly before quickly bouncing up.

Ikey

My Fico score from Amex (785) is different from my Discover score (800).

Srulky

What’s the difference between this and credit karma?

David

I’m fascinated with your through the roof score. I get a range of FICO and fake between the low teens and as high as 840 from Wells Fargo. Ironically, when I got my Venture X from Capital One, whose site has a low 820’s score for me, it came in the mail with an accompanying letter saying my score was 780–as in below, well below, 800. Apparently they make decisions on a drastically more conservative model than the one they blow smoke with.

At any rate, I wonder how your score got so high given how many applications you must submit to have all of these cards you write about. I have only a few cards but got 3 more over the past 2 years (6 month intervals) and can’t rival you though I’m old and have a long and literally perfect repayment history with utilization almost never topping 10%.

Natey

I’m pretty sure you can get your score directly from Experian for free through their website

Justmeha

This

GUWonder

It’s sort of like a game to play the credit scores. My credit utilization is usually no higher than 1%, so can’t really tweak that more. Sometimes when applying for a new card, I also put in for a credit line increase on an older card or two. Other than having more aged accounts, not much left to be done to get my credit scores higher.

Avi

Is there any way to bring your credit utilization back down after it went up based on you not paying your bills before the statement closes? My payments are all up to date yet my credit utilization in my amex account is still at 90 percent

Bob

From my experience, the Amex score is not that great. Over the last six months, my Discover score was 825-845. Citi was also going up and down (875+/-). It makes sense because my utilization was changing. However, Amex was stuck at 850. It looks like a marketing tool.

Avi

Just BTW the fico credit score on amex does not work out of country without a VPN I believe the same is with Experian

GUWonder

The Amex credit score thing used to work outside of the US without a US VPN/IP address until a handful of months ago. Then suddenly it went away and now it’s only accessible online via Amex when using a VPN node in the US or a US IP address.

I have noticed more and more countries have credit reporting and population directory sites that seem geo-blocked by IP address in the last 12 months than was the case in 2022 or even January 2023. Not sure how much good such blocking does with regard to criminals and government actors using these info channels to exploit for their own ends.

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