Credit Karma Credit Monitoring Review

Best Free Service

Credit Karma is a personal finance company founded in 2007. They offer a variety of services, including free tax preparation, report error identification, and credit monitoring. All sensitive information is encrypted, which may provide customers some assurance that it will be kept safe from hackers.

Besides providing credit monitoring service at zero cost, their website is filled with credit-related information. This may be helpful for someone looking to better understand their credit situation and devise the next steps to achieve their goals, whether that’s keeping your credit safe from bad actors or monitoring your credit score while you try to raise it.

Screen shot of creditkarma.com, July 24, 2019.

No Credit Card Required

Credit Karma’s monitoring service does not require you to enter your credit card information. Signing up is as simple as filling out some basic data, entering the last four digits of your Social Security number and confirming your identity. 

Almost immediately, you will see your credit score from TransUnion and Equifax. You might also get invited to apply for a new credit card. At this point, your credit is already being monitored and you’ll be alerted via email or app notification if there are any changes.

Credit Karma looks into two bureaus, TransUnion and Equifax. They give you an idea of your credit scores, but they use a credit-scoring model called VantageScore. While this method of calculating creditworthiness may tell consumers whether their credit score is improving, staying the same, or declining, it is not the FICO score generally used by banks, mortgage companies, and other financial institutions.

Numbers and Bottom Line

To reiterate, Credit Karma is a zero-cost service offering. Their credit monitoring service will allow you to keep an eye on the progress of your credit score. The service also looks for errors in your report, signs of identity theft and anything that may be considered suspicious. In the event that Credit Karma picks up on any of these, you will be alerted. You can even check what data breaches exposed your information and which one of your passwords was possibly compromised.

We’ve come across some customers reporting difficulty in reaching Credit Karma’s customer service. That said, considering this is a free and largely automated service, we would urge you to manage your expectations.

While Credit Karma stands above other free services, it still provides monitoring that some users may consider limited. Hence, we encourage you to try a free service because there is little to no risk involved. If you find your needs require premium monitoring, read on and learn about the other services highlighted below.