What is a good credit score, and what is good enough?

On FICO’s scale of 300 to 850, a score of 670 to 739 is labeled Good, 740 to 799 Very Good and 800 or higher Exceptional. FICO says a score of 670 or above is generally considered good. Those labels describe where you stand next to other consumers; they are not lending rules. Each lender sets its own cutoffs and price tiers, so “good enough” depends on what you are applying for, and for a mortgage sold to Fannie Mae the best price tier starts at 780.

The ranges, as FICO and VantageScore publish them

The national average FICO Score was 714 in FICO’s Credit Insights report of August 2026, in the middle of the Good band.

VantageScore uses the same 300 to 850 scale with different cut points and names. For VantageScore 4.0, the company lists 781 to 850 as Superprime, 661 to 780 as Prime, 601 to 660 as Near prime and 300 to 600 as Subprime.

The two scales line up only loosely. VantageScore’s top tier starts at 781, while FICO’s Very Good starts at 740, and the two models often give the same person different numbers to begin with (see why your FICO and VantageScore differ). The FICO Auto and Bankcard scores some lenders use run from 250 to 900, so none of these bands apply to them.

Lenders price by tiers, not by labels

“There is no single minimum credit score required by all lenders,” FICO says; each one sets its criteria by its risk tolerance and the type of loan. VantageScore says the same about its scale. In practice a lender sorts applicants into a handful of score buckets and gives everyone in a bucket the same price. A 745 and an 850 can land in the same top bucket at one lender, while a 739 and a 740 land in different buckets.

Card issuers and auto lenders rarely publish where their buckets start. Mortgages sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the exception, and their grid shows what one tier is worth in dollars.

The mortgage grid, where 20 points cost money

Fannie Mae charges lenders a loan-level price adjustment, a fee set by credit score and loan-to-value ratio, and lenders pass it on to borrowers through a higher rate or higher closing costs. This is Fannie Mae’s 2026 matrix for a purchase loan with a term over 15 years and a loan-to-value of 75.01% to 80%, applied to a $350,000 loan:

Three things stand out:

• 780 is the ceiling that counts. The grid has no tier above it, so an 840 pays the same as a 781. On this loan, points above 780 buy nothing.
• Each step is 20 points wide, and moving up one step saves between $437.50 and $1,750 on this loan, depending on where you start.
• Very Good is not the top. A 750 sits in the 740 to 759 row and pays $1,750 more than an 800 here.

Two details change the math for you. The lender prices on one representative score: under Fannie Mae’s Selling Guide, the middle of your three bureau scores (or the lower of two), and with co-borrowers, the lowest of those. And a bigger down payment shrinks the role of the score: at a loan-to-value of 60% or less, the matrix charges no score adjustment at all for any score from 640 up. Since September 30, 2026, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have aligned these fees for loans scored with VantageScore 4.0 and Classic FICO, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

FHA loans use minimums instead of a price grid. Since HUD’s 2010 rule, a score of 580 or higher qualifies for maximum financing, which means the 3.5% minimum down payment; 500 to 579 requires 10% down; below 500, FHA will not insure the loan.

What is good enough for your next application

• A conventional mortgage within a year. Find your representative score and the tier boundary above it. If you are within 20 points of 740, 760 or 780, crossing it is worth hundreds or thousands of dollars. If you are already at 780, stop working on the score and put the effort into the down payment and your debt-to-income ratio, which can sink an application a perfect score cannot save.
• An FHA mortgage. 580 is the line that matters for the 3.5% down payment. Individual lenders can set higher minimums of their own, so ask before you apply.
• Credit cards and auto loans. There is no public grid. FICO’s bands are a fair rough guide: at 670 and up you are where FICO says most lenders see a good score, and below 580 unsecured approvals get harder and a secured card is the usual starting point. Where the lender offers prequalification with a soft pull, use it before a full application.
• No score yet. A file too new for FICO’s minimum criteria produces no score at all, not a low one; see what to do with a thin file.

Moving up one tier before you apply

If a boundary is close, start with card balances. Most FICO versions, including the Classic FICO scores mortgage lenders use, read only the most recent balance each card reported, with no memory of last month. Paying balances down before the statement closing date, in the month or two before the lender pulls your reports, can lift the score quickly. The details are in how credit utilization works.

Then stop applying for new credit for six to 12 months before a mortgage. A hard inquiry counts in FICO for 12 months, and a new account also lowers the average age of your accounts (see what a hard inquiry costs).

Late payments are the slow part. They weigh less as they age but can stay on your report for seven years, so autopay for at least the minimum on every account protects the 35% of the score that payment history carries.

Finally, check the data the score is built from. Pull your three reports for free at AnnualCreditReport.com before you apply, and dispute anything wrong; a late payment or collection that is not yours is the one negative mark you can remove in weeks rather than years.