Is a 460 to 579 Credit Score Bad? Loans, Cards, and Rates Explained.

Search this score and every page hands you the same verdict: poor, high risk, get a secured card and wait. It is true as far as it goes, since a file in this range pays the most for every dollar it borrows, and the credit-repair industry has a long record of selling fixes it never delivered.

What those pages skip is that a score is a summary of a report, and reports carry errors. The number tells you what lenders charge today. It does not tell you whether every item behind it belongs there.

Is a 460 to 579 Credit Score Bad?

Yes. FICO puts every score under 580 in its lowest band, Poor, on a scale that runs from 300 to 850 (myFICO, 2026). Lenders read that band as high risk, so the products you want cost more or come with a no. That is bad for your wallet. It is also a number with a file behind it.

A 579 sits one point under Fair, and a 460 sits deep inside Poor. Both get the same label, and lenders still price them differently, as the rates below show. Each bureau keeps its own file on you, so you can hold three different scores at once. Our guide to the difference between a credit report and a credit score explains why.

What Can You Get Approved for With a 460 to 579 Score?

Four things are open to this range: a secured card, a used-car loan, a small loan from a credit union or online lender, and in narrow cases an FHA mortgage. The FHA line is the sharpest. It accepts a score as low as 500 with 10% down, and the 3.5% down payment starts at 580 (Fannie Mae, 2025).

Secured credit card. You put down a deposit and it becomes your limit. The average limit on new secured cards at the largest banks was $362 in 2022 (Philadelphia Fed, 2024), so expect a small line. Pay it on time and use little of it.

Used-car loan from a subprime lender. The rate is the real cost here. Ask what down payment the lender wants before you visit the lot, and get the APR in writing.

Small loan from a credit union or online lender. Federal credit unions can make payday alternative loans of $200 to $1,000 over one to six months, with the rate capped at 28% and a one-month membership wait (NCUA, 2026). Online lenders price by score, so hold any offer up against that 28% line.

FHA mortgage with 10% down. Scores from 500 to 579 qualify only at 10% down. Below 500 there is no FHA route. Whether a given lender goes that low is the lender’s call, so ask before you apply.

For cards in particular, our guide to the best credit cards by credit score shows what each band can reach.

What Is Out of Reach at a 460 to 579 Score?

Rewards cards, prime rates and most conventional mortgages stay closed. Mainstream unsecured cards with perks are built for stronger files, and conventional loans have long asked for a 620 minimum.

Fannie Mae announced that from November 15, 2025 its underwriting system moved from a hard minimum score to a broader look at the whole file. A broader look is not a promise of approval, and a score this low still sits at the bottom of the price list.

Renting is a different gate, because landlords pull their own reports and set their own cutoffs. Our guide to the credit score you need to rent an apartment covers what they check.

What Rates Does a 460 to 579 Score Pay?

Borrowers in Experian’s deep-subprime band, scores 300 to 500, paid close to 16% on new-car loans in the first quarter of 2026, against 4.55% for superprime borrowers (Experian, 2026). That gap is the real price of the label.

A score of 501 to 579 falls between those two columns, so its rate does too. Cards run high for everyone. The average rate hit 25.2% on general purpose cards and 31.3% on store cards in 2024, the highest since at least 2015 (CFPB, 2025). Those are averages across every borrower. Lenders quote personal loans by score, so get the quote before you commit.

How Do You Rebuild a Score Under 580?

Pay every bill on time first. Payment history is 35% of a FICO Score, the largest single piece (myFICO, 2026).

Pay on time. Set autopay for the minimum on every account, then pay more by hand when you can. One late mark costs more than any other habit fixes.

Keep balances low. Utilization is the share of your limit you use. On a secured card the deposit sets the limit, so a small balance keeps that share low. Our guide to the five factors that affect your credit score shows how the pieces fit.

Read all three reports. AnnualCreditReport.com gives you each bureau’s report for free. Look for accounts you do not recognize, dates that look wrong, and balances that do not match your records.

Which Route Fits Your Goal at This Score?

Pick by goal. A secured card builds history, a used-car loan gets you a vehicle, a credit union loan covers a short gap, and FHA at 10% down is the one mortgage door.

Why Do Credit Repair Tools and Score Apps Let Borrowers Down?

Users of the big names report the same failure again and again: they paid for months and nothing changed. It is the most common complaint in the latest one- and two-star Trustpilot reviews for Lexington Law, Credit Saint, The Credit People and Dispute Beast.

Credit Karma, 1.1 on Trustpilot from 912 reviews. 43 of the 197 one- and two-star reviews in its latest 200 say it promised a result that did not happen. 36 say they were locked out, and 34 say nobody answers.

Lexington Law, 3.2 from 624 reviews. 79 of the 134 one- and two-star reviews in its latest 200 say they paid for months and nothing changed. 33 say billing continued or a refund was refused.

Credit Saint, 3.6 from 764 reviews. 36 of the 57 one- and two-star reviews in its latest 200 say they paid for months and nothing changed. 23 say billing continued or a refund was refused.

The Credit People, 1.7 from 17 reviews. 11 of the 17 one- and two-star reviews in its latest 17 say they paid for months and nothing changed. 4 say it promised a result that did not happen.

Dispute Beast, 4.2 from 2,067 reviews. 19 of the 33 one- and two-star reviews in its latest 200 say they paid for months and nothing changed. 6 say nobody answers.

DisputeBee, 3.2 from 68 reviews. 6 of the 10 one- and two-star reviews in its latest 66 say nobody answers. 4 say the tool itself breaks.

For a borrower under 580, the sharpest version is the approval-odds pitch. Eduardo F, a 1-star Trustpilot review of Credit Karma, September 14, 2026, put it this way: “Credit Karma gets people to apply for loans or credit cards with outstanding approval odds which I believe to be a complete lie. So they make me hurt your credit score with hard inquiries, when in actuality you have 0 approval odds, not outstanding.” On January 23, 2023 the FTC finalized an order requiring Credit Karma to pay $3 million, after alleging it used dark patterns to tell consumers they were pre-approved for card offers when many were later denied.

Credit repair has its own record. On August 28, 2023 the CFPB reached a $2.7 billion settlement with Progrexion Marketing and PGX Holdings, the parent of Lexington Law and CreditRepair.com, over advance fees on telemarketed credit repair and deceptive bait-and-switch advertising. On December 5, 2024 the CFPB announced $1.8 billion returned to 4.3 million people harmed in that scheme.

The CFPB also alleged on September 30, 2024 that Key Credit Repair charged advance fees before achieving durable results and misrepresented its ability to remove negative items, and it sought $41.3 million. On August 10, 2026 the FTC halted Credit Glory, which it says collected nearly $200 million through unlawful charges.

Read the File Behind the Score Before You Accept Its Price

The FTC found that one in five consumers had an error on at least one of their three credit reports, and 5% had one serious enough to raise what they pay for credit (FTC, 2013). For a borrower at 460 to 579, that means the price in the rate table may include items that should not be there.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act has given you the right to dispute inaccurate, incomplete or unverifiable information since 1970. A bureau has to investigate and delete or correct what it cannot verify. Accurate negative items stay for their legal window, seven years for most, and no dispute changes that.

You can do all of this by hand for the cost of stamps. Our guide to how AI credit repair works covers what software can and cannot do.

The search page says poor and stops. Poor is the price today. Whether every item behind that price is right is a question your reports can answer.

Which Tool Checks the File Behind a Score Under 580?

The choice turns on one question: do you want to read and sign every letter that goes out on your file, or hand the work to someone else? Here is how six options compare on price, what you get, bureau reach and Trustpilot score.

Every price is that company’s own published rate, read off that company’s own site on September 15, 2026. Trustpilot scores and review counts as published on September 24, 2026.

How CreditRefresh Goes From Report Scan to Mailed Dispute in Three Steps

If part of a 460 to 579 score comes from items that should not be on the file, the job is finding them and disputing each one correctly. We scan all three of your reports, flag items that look inaccurate, incomplete, unverifiable or too old to report, and draft an FCRA letter for each one you choose. You review and sign, then mail it yourself or hand the round to RushMail for a small per-letter fee. Members rate us 4.3 on Trustpilot across 9 reviews. CreditRefresh comes with Refresh Monitoring at $49.99 a month, with no setup fee, no per-dispute charge and no contract. Accurate negative items stay on a report for their legal window, and the bureaus decide every dispute.

Files in this range are crowded. In CreditRefresh’s September 18, 2026 analysis of paying-member data, 97.7% of members carry at least one negative tradeline entry, with an average of 30 across the bureaus and a median of 25. Those are bureau-level entries, so one account can count more than once. Mailed dispute rounds average 23.6 disputed bureau-level items, and members’ VantageScore 3.0 averages 597 across the bureaus, with 66.4% averaging below 620.

In that same extract, 2.3% of disputed bureau-level items in mailed rounds had a recorded outcome. Within that subset, 47.9% were no longer reported on a newer pull of the same bureau, while 52.1% remained reported with a changed balance, status or negative flag.

Frequently Asked Questions

What credit card can I get with a 579 credit score?

A secured card is the dependable answer. Your deposit sets the limit, and the issuer reports your payments. Some issuers offer unsecured cards to this range, so read the fee and APR tables first, because every application is a hard inquiry.

What credit card can I get with a 460 credit score?

Start with a secured card and keep the deposit to an amount you can afford to lock up. A 460 sits in the deep-subprime band, so expect a high APR and a small limit. Use the card lightly and pay it on time.

What loan can I get with a 460 credit score?

Small loans from credit unions and specialty lenders, and a used-car loan on subprime terms. A federal credit union payday alternative loan runs $200 to $1,000 with a 28% rate cap. FHA mortgages start at 500, so a 460 falls below that line.

Can I buy a house with a 579 credit score?

Yes, through an FHA loan with 10% down. The 3.5% down payment starts at 580, one point higher. Conventional loans have long asked for 620, and Fannie Mae’s system has weighed the whole file since November 2025, so ask each lender for its own minimum.

How is a 579 credit score different from a 460?

Both are Poor, but they price differently. A 460 sits in the deep-subprime band, which ends at 500 and carries the highest auto rates. A 579 clears the FHA floor of 500 and sits one point under Fair.

Will a credit repair company raise my score?

No company can promise a score. The Credit Repair Organizations Act bars charging before the work is done, and the actions above show what regulators have alleged when firms broke that rule. You can dispute an error yourself for free.

CreditRefresh checks the file behind a score under 580 and drafts a letter for every flagged item, and nothing goes out without your signature. Check what is behind your score →