Free credit report: the difference between the official site and others

Free credit reports from Equifax, Experian and TransUnion come from one place: AnnualCreditReport.com, or the same service by phone at 1-877-322-8228 or by mail. Federal law guarantees one free report from each bureau every 12 months through that central source. On top of that, the three bureaus made weekly free reports permanent in 2023. The weekly access is a bureau commitment, not a legal right, but it costs nothing and works the same way.

The legal right dates to the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003, which amended the Fair Credit Reporting Act and required the central request system. The FTC says this is the only website authorized to fill orders for the free annual reports.

How to get them online, step by step

1. Type the address yourself. Lookalike sites buy search ads with “free credit report” in the name and then sell subscriptions.
2. Enter your details: name, address, Social Security number and date of birth. If you moved in the last two years, have your previous address ready.
3. Pick the bureaus. You can request one, two or all three. Pulling all three at once is the right call before a loan application; spacing them out is a way to check more often, though weekly access has made that less important.
4. Answer each bureau’s questions. Each bureau asks its own security questions drawn from your file, such as the amount of a loan payment or a past address, and you answer them separately for each one.
5. Save each report as a PDF before you leave the page. If you lose it, you can request a new one the following week.

Plan on about 15 minutes for all three. Online requests are available immediately once your identity is confirmed.

If the site cannot verify you

Verification fails more often than people expect: a thin file, a recent move, a typo, or a question about an old loan you no longer remember. A failure on one bureau does not block the others. For the one that failed, you have two backup routes:

• Phone: call 1-877-322-8228. The report is processed and mailed within 15 days.
• Mail: fill in the Annual Credit Report Request Form and send it to Annual Credit Report Request Service, P.O. Box 105281, Atlanta, GA 30348-5281. It is processed and mailed within 15 days of receipt.

Either can take longer if the bureau needs more proof of identity, usually a copy of a government ID and a recent bill or bank statement showing your address. Send copies, not originals.

Other free reports you are entitled to

The annual and weekly reports are not the only free copies the FCRA requires:

• After a denial. If a lender, landlord, insurer or employer takes adverse action based on your report, you can get a free copy from the bureau they used if you ask within 60 days of the notice.
• Special circumstances. One extra free report every 12 months from each bureau if you are unemployed and plan to look for work within 60 days, receive public assistance, or believe your file is inaccurate because of fraud.
• Fraud alerts. Placing a fraud alert entitles you to a free report, and an extended fraud alert for identity theft victims entitles you to two in the following 12 months.
• Specialty reports. Companies that track other parts of your history must also give you a copy, and many must do it free every 12 months. ChexSystems covers checking and savings accounts, which is the report to pull if a bank turned you down (see second chance bank accounts). NCTUE covers phone, pay TV and utility accounts. LexisNexis Risk Solutions covers insurance claims and public records. The CFPB publishes a list of consumer reporting companies with how to request from each.

Why there is no score on it

The free report is your data: accounts, payment history, collections, bankruptcies and inquiries. A score is a separate product that FICO or VantageScore calculates from that data, and the law that guarantees the free report does not include one. Many card issuers and banks show a free score to customers; check which model and bureau it uses before comparing it to a lender’s number (see why FICO and VantageScore differ). To make sense of the report itself, use our guide to reading a credit report line by line.

Is paid credit monitoring worth it?

Paid monitoring sells three things: alerts when something changes on your file, frequent score updates, and identity theft insurance that typically pays recovery costs such as legal fees rather than stolen money. The reports themselves you can already get free every week.

Run the numbers on a plan at, say, $25 a month: that is $300 a year. For most people the free combination does more:

• check all three reports yourself every few months, and before any big application;
• use the free score your card issuer or bank already shows you;
• place a credit freeze at all three bureaus, which stops new accounts instead of telling you about them after the fact.

A freeze is free by federal law, does not affect your score and does not stop you from pulling your own reports. Our guide to credit freezes and locks covers how to place and lift one. Paid monitoring makes more sense if you have already been a victim and want alerts on several bureaus while you clean up.

If a report shows something wrong, the next step is a written dispute: see how to dispute a credit report error.