I need to find out my credit score as I’m starting the process of getting approved for a home loan. I know you can get free reports once a a year, but the one time I remember doing that in the past it was my credit history but not my score. I don’t mind paying a bit, but if it’s possible to get my score for free obviously that would be preferable.
As of I think it was mid-July, if you apply for credit and are denied, the latest “credit reform” laws (Dodd-Frank) entitles you to receive a free credit score along with credit report. Unfortunately, there are several different credit scores, just as there are multiple credit reporting agencies.
I strongly advise against intentionally applying for credit you don’t expect to get just before applying for a home loan. The safer course would be to spend the $20 at myfico.com.
This is the only authorized free credit report - Annual Credit Report.com - Home Page
All others are either scams or money making operations. There’s really no need to go elsewhere.
There is a difference between a credit report and a credit score. You can obtain free credit reports from the link above, but if you are looking for a credit score, that is proprietary information belonging to Fair Issac Corp. It’s call a FICO score, you have to pay for it and you can only get a legitimate copy from http://www.fico.com/
And the three big credit reporting agencies each calculate their own credit scores, on a different scale from FICO, though mortgage lenders usually use FICO.
You can get a good estimate at www.creditkarma.com. It is a good and useful free site in general for credit tools. It is legit and useful for most people to have an account.
I’ve used creditkarma.com. It’s free, and it provides you estimates of your credit score. It doesn’t actually give you a FICO score, but I’ve heard that its estimated measure is pretty close.
And yes, it is a money-making operation. It seems to make its money by advertising all sorts of credit products, emphasizing that getting a second credit card might just increase your credit score in the long run, and oh hey there’s a link to a some bank’s credit card.
Atlanta-based consumer reporter Monsieur Clark Howard has said, that from the big three credit reporting agencies (Experian, Trans Union, Equifax), that:
Equifax
has the score the is most similar / near a FICO score.
Except that the FICO ranges from 300 to 850, and the Equifax score ranges from 501-990. Seems like that would introduce some significant differences.
A while back when I pulled a free report at Annual Credit Report.com - Home Page it offered to also sell me the FICO score. From what I remember it was less than $10 to get the FICO score. Since FICO is what most banks use it’s probably the score you should be most interested in.
If you really want to see your FICO score for free, you actually can do it at http://www.freecreditscore.com/. You just have to be very careful about it.
The “free score report” is contingent on your enrollment in a free 7-day trial of their credit monitoring service, which renews and starts charging you automatically if you don’t cancel it during the free trial. Also, you can’t cancel online: you have to call them up and speak to an agent, who will try to talk you out of it.
You also have to be very careful about what you click on when you’re on the site, as it will constantly try to upsell you to a “3-bureau report” or something similar. So if you do decide to use their site, read everything very carefully before you click.
Sure, they’ve got a rather underhanded business model that is supported by deceptive advertising, but if you really want your FICO score for “free”, then you can definitely do so, subsidized by those that are less careful in their clicking and/or less diligent in remembering to cancel the service.
As other posters have said the credit agencies HAVE to, by law, give you a REPORT for free, via the annualcreditreport.com website (you have the right to one free report per-year).
If you MUST have your score (rather than just the report it’s based on) then you are going to have to pay for it 
IMO all the subscription schemes (where you pay are monthly fee) are bare-faced scams. You can however fork out a one off fee of $10-20 and get a score from somewhere like myfico.com (I had to do this when applying for an apartment this year).
Actually you can do it without spending the money - they’ll give you your score right off the bat, when you sign up for their monthly monitoring. The trick is to cancel it before the 2 week (or whatever) period expires. Forgot to note: I did this last year when we were considering refinancing, I canceled within the trial period, easy-peasy. IIRC, I might have had to actually phone someone to cancel, vs. being able to easily do it online.
That is correct, but does not address the OP’s question.
But with a couple of caveats: some of the monthly monitoring sites give you their proprietary credit score, rather than FICO. Also you have to make sure you don’t click through screens too quickly and agree to “upgrade” your report to something costing money right off the bat.
At myfico.com, I’m pretty sure you get your actual real FICO score. At the other sites, you’re correct, you might get something that is “almost, but not quite, entirely unlike” the real FICO.
Ah, but the world is degenerating.
It USED to be possible to get a free genuine legit FICO score – Any time, as often as you want.
IFF you had the right kind of account at Washington Mutual, that is. I forget if it was their credit card or a checking account. At the Wamu web site, you could sign in and see your FICO score any time. It was one of the perks they offered.
When Wamu crashed and burned and Chase took over, that perk went where the woodbine twineth. A rep told me that it would cost too much for them to provide that service. So I gather from that, that Wamu actually was paying FICO for the right to offer that. (On some message board I saw at the time, there was a flurry of discussion as to where else one could find this, with no useful result that I ever saw.)
Those were the days.
This raises the question: what does a bank or other credit issuer pay to get your FICO score? I have to assume it’s less - a LOT less - than the 10-15 bucks us mere mortals are asked to pay for a one-time FICO or Fake-o score.
Don’t know about the U.S., but in Canada (and I *THINK *it’s the same in the U.S., seeing as the credit rating companies are the same); all you have to do is send a written request by post; with a SAE; and they must give it you.
No, it’s definitely not the same in the US. If I need a prescription from my vet for anti-flea and tick meds for my dog, when a Canadian can buy the same stuff OTC, why should consumer finance be easy? 
For a legitimately free credit report, you can either apply for credit and be denied, which will entitle you to a free report, or you can get a free report once a year from annualcreditreport.com
For a legitimately free credit score, if you apply for credit and get denied, the creditor has to provide you with your score under the new consumer credit laws. Bear in mind that the “hard” credit inquiry will typically cost you five points off your score and thousands of dollars on a 30-year mortgage due to higher interest rates. It’s free, but very expensive!
As people have mentioned above, there are ways to get free scores that involve carefully-timed signup and cancellation of services, but if you goof and forget, you’re probably going to be charged more than if you just went to myfico.com and bought a score.