What Is a Good Credit Score in 2026?.

A good credit score in 2026 is 670 or higher on the FICO scale and 661 or higher on the VantageScore scale. Both models run 300 to 850. That much is settled, and it is also the part that helps a reader least, because the score is calculated from a credit file that may carry errors nobody has caught. The Federal Trade Commission’s congressionally mandated accuracy study found that one in five consumers had an error on at least one of their three credit reports, and that for 5% of consumers the error was serious enough to raise the price they pay for credit or insurance. Sometimes a low score reflects real spending. Sometimes it reflects a mistake the FTC has already measured.

Thresholds are not arbitrary either. Lenders calibrate them against default probability and then price the loan against that probability, which is why the same auto loan costs a subprime borrower thousands more than it costs a superprime one. What follows is what each tier is worth, where the average American sits, which score a given lender is actually reading, and how to tell whether the number in front of you reflects your file or reflects a mistake in it.

FICO’s Good Band Starts at 670; VantageScore’s Prime Starts at 661

FICO publishes five bands: Poor below 580, Fair 580 to 669, Good 670 to 739, Very Good 740 to 799, and Exceptional 800 and up. FICO describes the Fair band as sitting below the average score of U.S. consumers.

VantageScore publishes its own tiers that do not line up with FICO’s at every cut. Superprime is 781 to 850. Prime is 661 to 780. Near Prime is 601 to 660. Subprime is 500 to 600. Deep Subprime is 300 to 499. The two models share the 300 to 850 range and disagree on where a band starts, so a 720 on one model and a 740 on the other can describe the same file.

Industry models add a third layer. The FICO Auto Score and FICO Bankcard Score run on a 250 to 900 range and weight the relevant account type more heavily. Mortgage lenders have long used FICO 2, 4 and 5. For a deeper breakdown of how the two main scales differ, see FICO Score vs VantageScore: The Real Differences and Credit Score Ranges Explained.

Lenders Set Approval and Price Separately Within Score Bands

FICO’s Good band begins at 670. A lender still sets its own approval rules and price, using the score alongside the rest of the application.

• 800 and up. FICO calls this Exceptional. A lender may offer its lowest advertised rate to an applicant who also meets its income, debt and other underwriting rules.
• 740 to 799. FICO calls this Very Good. The rate offered still depends on the lender and the product.
• 670 to 739. This is FICO’s Good band. The Federal Reserve Board’s G.19 Consumer Credit release put the average commercial-bank credit-card APR at 20.94% across all accounts in the second quarter of 2026, and 22.15% on accounts assessed interest; those averages are not a rate quote for an individual applicant.
• 580 to 669. This is FICO’s Fair band. FHA permits a 580 score with a 3.5% down payment under its published program requirements, while each lender still evaluates the full application.
• Below 580. FICO calls this Poor. Available products, rates and loan terms depend on the lender’s own underwriting rules.

Lenders read different models, which is why your three numbers disagree

A mortgage underwriter, a card issuer and a dealership finance office are not looking at one score. They are looking at models built for their own product, run against a file that each bureau maintains separately. FICO itself states that the same consumer’s score can differ across the three bureaus because each keeps its own file, which is the practical reason disputes are worked bureau by bureau and item by item.

The mortgage side is mid-transition. The Federal Housing Finance Agency validated and approved FICO 10T and VantageScore 4.0 on October 24, 2022 and permitted bi-merge reporting the same day, moved the implementation date in January 2025, began a limited rollout on April 22, 2026, and on September 9, 2026 expanded VantageScore 4.0 to all approved lenders. Classic FICO remains permitted throughout, and FICO 10T is not currently eligible for delivery.

Which of your numbers the lender uses is then a mechanic. Under Fannie Mae’s Selling Guide B3-5.1-02, effective April 22, 2026, where three scores are obtained the lender uses the middle one, where two are obtained the lower, and where there is more than one borrower the lowest applicable score from the group, including for loan-level price adjustments. A single bad file at a single bureau can therefore set the price on a joint application.

The U.S. average sits at 714, inside the Good band

FICO’s Score Credit Insights Report, fall 2026 edition, puts the average U.S. FICO Score at 714, down one point from July 2025 and below the record 718 set in April 2023, with delinquent student-loan payments a leading drag. FICO also states its scores are used in about 90% of U.S. lending decisions. On the other scale, VantageScore’s CreditGauge for June 2026 reported the average VantageScore 4.0 rose one point to 702.

The distribution behind those averages is not stable at the edges. VantageScore’s CreditGauge for December 2025 found 19.0% of scored consumers in the subprime tier and 17.9% in near prime, up from 18.5% and 17.6% in December 2023, with the prime tier down 1.1 points over the same two years. TransUnion’s Credit Industry Insights Report for the first quarter of 2026 recorded 14.8% of US consumers in its subprime VantageScore risk tier in the fourth quarter of 2025 against 15.1% in the fourth quarter of 2019, while super prime grew from 36.9% to 40.7%. The middle is thinning in both directions.

Five factors build the score, and payment history carries 35% of it

FICO publishes the category weights on its own credit education pages: payment history at 35%, amounts owed at 30%, length of credit history at 15%, new credit at 10%, and credit mix at 10%. FICO states that these weights describe the general population and vary with an individual profile.

Payment history is the heaviest and the most literal. FICO lists the reportable late categories as 30 days, 60, 90, 120, 150 and charge off, says a 90-day late is worse than a 30-day late and that a recent late payment can be more damaging than an older one, and publishes no point values for any of them. The ladder begins at 30 days; there is no rung below it.

Amounts owed is dominated by revolving utilization, the ratio of card balances to card limits. Length of history counts the age of the oldest account, the average age of all accounts and the age of specific types, which is the reason closing an old card can work against you. Credit mix rewards a balance of revolving and installment accounts, and the effect is small enough that taking on debt to chase it is not worth doing. New credit covers hard inquiries: FICO states a hard inquiry sits on the report for two years but is only considered by the score for twelve months, and that the effect of a single inquiry is usually small. FICO’s two credit-education pages disagree on the size, one saying under five points and the other saying five to ten on average across files. Neither is a price your file will pay. What Affects Your Credit Score? The 5 Factors Explained works through each one.

An accuracy problem is the leading complaint, and it hits the score before you see it

Recorded in the CFPB’s public Consumer Complaint Database, across 5,861,954 credit reporting or other personal consumer reports complaints in the window July 2025 through June 2026, the leading issue is incorrect information on your report at 59.4%, followed by improper use of your report at 21.6% and problem with a company’s investigation into an existing problem at 18.2%. These are unverified consumer allegations; the CFPB does not confirm the facts alleged, complaint volume tracks company size as well as conduct, and the regulator has said its own portal is not a measure of the market.

What that composition says about a score is narrow and useful. The category consumers write in about most often is not a rate or a denial. It is the accuracy of what is on the file the score is calculated from. The Fair Credit Reporting Act has given every consumer the right to dispute inaccurate, incomplete or unverifiable information since 1970, and a bureau that cannot verify an item must delete or correct it.

Superprime and deep subprime pay different prices for the same car loan

The gap is largest where the loan is largest and longest. Experian’s State of the Automotive Finance Market for the first quarter of 2026 put the average new-car APR at 4.55% for superprime borrowers at 781 and up, against about 16% for deep-subprime borrowers at 300 to 500, and 6.30% to 21.77% on used cars. Experian also recorded that borrowers at 661 or higher took 68.4% of financing, against 15.8% for subprime and deep subprime borrowers.

Insurance is the cost people forget. The Federal Trade Commission’s 2007 Report to Congress on credit-based insurance scores, built on 1.4 million auto policies, predicted that where scores are used 59% of consumers would see a premium decrease and 41% an increase, with a median increase of 16% against a median decrease of 13%. That same report concluded the scores separate consumers into groups with different average risk and cannot predict the claims of an individual. Four states bar the practice in auto rating outright: California, Hawaii, Massachusetts and Michigan.

How long a good score takes depends on what is holding the file down

FICO’s published minimum requirements are one account opened six months or more, one account reported to the bureau within the past six months, and no deceased indicator. A single account can satisfy both conditions, so a first score can exist inside six months of a first account.

Rebuilding is a different problem from building, and the variable is the item. A late payment loses weight as it ages, which FICO states directly. A collection is governed by a clock rather than a judgment: under FCRA Section 605, most negative items may be reported for seven years and title 11 bankruptcy cases for ten years from the order for relief. Timelines from there depend on what is on the file and on how the bureaus resolve what you dispute. What is worth knowing is the order of operations. Read the file first, dispute what is inaccurate, incomplete, unverifiable or too old to report, and let the accurate history do the rest.

Where a free monitoring app stops being enough

A score app tells you the number and, at best, why the number moved. That is a different job from getting a wrong item off the file it was calculated from, and readers notice the gap when the app starts recommending products.

Eduardo F, in a 1-star Trustpilot review of Credit Karma on September 14, 2026, wrote: “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.”

The score is also free to see without a product attached. Under FCRA Section 615(a), a lender that takes adverse action based on a consumer report must tell you which agency furnished the report, give its address and phone number, state that the agency did not make the decision, and tell you of your right to a free copy of that report within 60 days and to dispute anything inaccurate or incomplete in it. Where the lender used a numerical score, it must disclose that too. A denial is the cheapest look at your own file you will ever get.

What score you need for a house, and what a dispute does mid-application

Fannie Mae’s Selling Guide and Desktop Underwriter update effective November 15, 2025 moved conventional loans from a hard 620 minimum to a broader credit-risk assessment. FHA loans require 580 with 3.5% down, or 500 with 10% down. VA and USDA loans set no strict statutory minimum, though lenders apply their own overlays.

The market is pricing tighter than the floor. Urban Institute’s Housing Finance at a Glance for March 2026 put the median FICO score at origination for owner-occupied purchase loans at 750 as of January 2026, up from 738 in December 2021. Denials are shifting too: the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis found debt-to-income was the largest stated reason for mortgage denial at 35% of denials in 2024, up from 29% in 2018, while credit history held steady at 29%, across more than 30 million HMDA home purchase applications.

One trap is specific to timing. Under Fannie Mae Selling Guide B3-5.2-03, where a borrower has disputed information in the credit file and the credit reporting company confirms it is incorrect or incomplete, and underwriting has to be completed before the file can be corrected, the lender cannot use the credit scores when manually underwriting the loan and must assess the credit risk from the traditional credit history instead. Dispute work is best finished before an application, not during one. What Credit Score Do You Need to Buy a House? covers the rest of the underwriting picture.

What score you need for a car, and what each tier pays

Experian’s State of the Automotive Finance Market for the first quarter of 2026 reports superprime at 781 and up drawing 4.55% on new cars and 6.30% on used, with deep subprime at 300 to 500 paying about 16% new and up to 21.77% used. Prime financing in practice starts around 661, which is the same threshold VantageScore uses for its Prime tier.

The monthly payment has moved independently of the rate. Experian recorded the average new-vehicle payment rising from 748 dollars to a record 770 dollars year over year in the first quarter of 2026, and the average used-vehicle payment from 523 dollars to 531 dollars. Subprime borrowers made up 15.31% of total vehicle financing in the fourth quarter of 2025, up from 14.54% a year earlier. What Credit Score Do You Need to Buy a Car? has the tier detail.

Which tool fits the job when your score is low because the file is wrong

The decision here is not which company has the best marketing. It is whether the number is low because of accurate history, which only time and payments change, or because of items that should not be on the file at all, which is a dispute problem. Tools split cleanly on that question: some show you the score, some draft the letters, some do it on your behalf for a monthly retainer.

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.

What CreditRefresh does with the report behind your score

The members who sign up here are not guessing that something is wrong. In our September 18, 2026 analysis of paying-member data, 97.7% of paying members have at least one negative tradeline entry, and the average member carries 30 of them across the bureaus, with a median of 25. The same account can appear at more than one bureau, and a negative entry is not automatically inaccurate or disputable. Mailed dispute rounds average 23.6 disputed bureau-level items, which is the workload a person is looking at when they open three reports and start reading.

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.

CreditRefresh is included with Refresh Monitoring at $49.99 a month, with no setup fee, no per-dispute charge and no contract. The AI reads all three bureau reports, flags what looks inaccurate, incomplete, unverifiable or too old to be reported, and drafts a print-ready FCRA letter for each item you pick. Bureaus generally have about 30 days to investigate. The bureaus decide the outcomes and your score depends on the rest of the file; we do not promise a number. Nothing is mailed until you have read the letter and signed it.

It is backed by our 100% money-back guarantee: members who work the full program and see no bureau score rise above where they started can claim back every Refresh Monitoring payment. It is a refund promise, never a score promise.

Frequently asked questions

How many Americans have a 700 credit score?

No federal series publishes a count at exactly 700. What is published is the middle of the distribution: FICO’s fall 2026 Score Credit Insights Report puts the average U.S. FICO Score at 714, which sits in the Good band of 670 to 739, and VantageScore’s June 2026 CreditGauge puts the average VantageScore 4.0 at 702.

Is 700 a good credit score?

Yes. Under FICO’s published bands, 700 sits inside Good, which runs 670 to 739. It clears the approval threshold for standard credit cards, conventional mortgages and auto loans. The rates offered sit above what a 740-plus file gets, and how much above depends on the product.

How rare is an 800 credit score?

FICO classifies 800 to 850 as Exceptional, its top band. Neither FICO’s fall 2026 report nor VantageScore’s CreditGauge publishes the share of consumers in that band, so any precise percentage you see quoted is worth tracing before you rely on it. What the published bands do establish is that 800 is the threshold where a borrower reaches the best published terms, and that lenders rarely differentiate further above it.

Is there anyone with an 850 credit score?

850 is the top of both the FICO and VantageScore scales, so it is attainable by definition. It is also not worth chasing: the pricing benefit above 800 is negligible, because lenders generally do not tier further inside the Exceptional band.

How rare is a 900 credit score?

On the models consumers see, 900 does not exist. FICO and VantageScore both cap at 850. Two industry models, the FICO Auto Score and the FICO Bankcard Score, run on a 250 to 900 range, so a 900 on one of those is the ceiling of a different scale and not a general-purpose credit score.

What credit score is needed to buy a $300,000 house?

The loan amount does not change the credit threshold; the loan program does. FHA sets 580 with 3.5% down, or 500 with 10% down. Fannie Mae’s Desktop Underwriter moved off a hard 620 minimum to a broader credit-risk assessment effective November 15, 2025. Urban Institute puts the median FICO at origination for owner-occupied purchase loans at 750 as of January 2026, which is the market you are competing in rather than the floor you must clear.

What credit score do you need for a $400,000 house?

Same answer as the $300,000 case: the program sets the credit floor and the loan size sets the debt-to-income math. The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis found debt-to-income was the single largest stated reason for mortgage denial at 35% in 2024, ahead of credit history at 29%, so on a larger balance the income side of the file is the more likely constraint.

Why are my three credit scores different?

Each bureau keeps its own file, and FICO states that a consumer’s score can differ across the three for that reason. A furnisher may report to one bureau and not another, and an error may exist at one bureau only. That is also why a dispute is filed bureau by bureau and item by item under FCRA Section 611, which gives the bureau generally 30 days to reinvestigate.

Score targets matter most in front of a specific decision. A mortgage rewards a 740. A premium card wants 700 to 740 depending on the issuer. Prime auto financing starts near 661. Before you time an application around a number, read the three files it is calculated from, because the FTC found one in five consumers has an error on at least one of them, and an error is the one drag on a score that the law gives you a direct remedy for.

Results may vary. No specific outcome is guaranteed. Bureaus determine dispute outcomes and scores depend on the rest of the file.

CreditRefresh cannot promise a score. It reads the three reports every score is built from and drafts a letter for each error you choose to challenge. Connecting your three reports takes a few minutes, and the first scan is ready the same day. Backed by a 100% money-back guarantee.

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