Creditors still use FICO.

Equifax uses FICO. You can get your FICO scores for Equifax and TransUnion at MyFico.com. Consumers can no longer purchase FICO scores for Experian.

TransUnion and Experian sites will sell you Vantage (different formula, scale to 990 vs FICO’s 850) or each has their own Fakko score. Third party monitoring services use their own Fakko.

Bascially, the market for consumers purchasing their own credit reports and score is becoming very profitable. A couple of the credit bureaus have developed their own scoring systems so they don’t have to pay Fair Issac for FICO scores. They are promising that these new scores take all sorts of things into consideration. But they don’t mean a thing if creditors are not using them.

If you get your credit score, be sure you know exactly which one it is. Otherwise you won’t have any idea if it’s good, fair, or poor.

The only thing I can think of is the new Vantage scoring system which is being used by Experian and Transunion as explained below.

This should explain it to you.

FICO scores from 300 to 850 and Vantage scores from 501 to 990.

Here is the breakdown for both systems.

Vantage Plus system scores from 501-990.
A-901-990
B-801-900
C-701-800
D-601-700
F-501-600

FICO system scores from 300-850.
Elite-740-& up
Prime-700-739
Preferred-660-699
Standard-625-659
Sub-prime-624-& under

FICO is the only one that matters since it’s the one that all major lenders look at.

So as you can see it depends on if your looking at a true FICO score or a Vantage plus score.

As far as what makes up credit scores it’s the following;
1. Payment history (longer the better) 35%
2. Time in bureau (longer the better) 15%
3. Types of credit (mix of credit cards & installment loans) 10%
4. New credit (new accounts and inquiries) 10%
5. Debt to credit ratio (lower the better) 30%

And just so you will know Experian only uses Vantage, Equifax only uses FICO and Transunion uses both depending of which type of credit report is requested of which there are 3. The standard that people get from The Internet, the auto enhanced which only car dealers and lenders see and the factual which only mortgage people see. The last two are not available to the general public.