Credit Karma Review - How to get free Credit Score and free Credit Report

Well, let me be honest, I had never heard of getting free credit score or free credit report other than getting a free credit report from Annualcreditreport.com, which is a consortium of three credit bureaus. In order to give fair review I wanted to try myself as a customer and check facts about their free credit score ad free credit report.

The Credit Karma's enrollment is three step process. In first step customer is asked to enter login credentials, which completes the account creation process. In second step you enter full details such as name, address, phone and last 4 of your social security number. Finally in last step you confirm your identity and access to your credit score and credit report is immediately available for viewing.

Credit Karma three step enrollment screen

Now if you are following my blog post, you will notice that I have not been asked so far to enter my credit card number. This proves Credit Karma does provide free credit score and free credit report to their customers. Now the question is which credit score, and what credit report they provide to customers?




Now it turns out Credit Karma is in business partnership with Transunion one of three credit bureaus to provide credit score and the consumer files for customers. In essence whatever is reported on Transunion credit file will be shared with you and the credit score awarded is also shared with customers.








once I had access to my account, I could see credit score and credit report with details on my personal information, credit card account details and the loans I had taken in past. Credit Karma along with free Transunion credit score also provides the addition scores such as Vintage score, Auto insurance score, and Home insurance score. Out of these scores Vintage score is new scoring model used by three credit bureaus for consistency and accuracy and rest two scoring models are industry specific.


Not only there credit report and credit score is free but also you get access to report for indefinite period. Now the question is how do Credit Karma make money by giving free credit report and credit score to customers. They make money from the commission they receive form third party companies, business partners who offer legal, debt consolidation, loans and other financial services to their customers.


Overall I consider this as good thing to happen for consumers. First they are getting free credit score, free credit report from Credit Karma. Secondly they don't have to pay them for accessing credit report. In addition to this customers have access to their knowledge repository and credit help line. After reading reviews on there site I was satisfied and was sure this is a definitely a legitimate business and has come up out if the box idea to help and educate consumers on credit, lending, and credit management ways.