Being aware of your credit score is a great deal, especially when trying to make it grow. Unfortunately, since the Credit Karma app appeared for the first time, it has become more notorious, offering users a free financial services app to generate your credit score.
For this reason, we dedicated this review to checking out the Credit Karma app and its operation.
What is Credit Karma?
It is a free mobile app designed to calculate your credit score average, which is where things usually get tricky.
With this app, you are supposed to know your credit score and its changes by week/month, but…
Is Credit Karma Free?
You will realize with most of the other companies “free credit score” when you register to receive your service, they will ask for your credit card, and then, if you ignore the conditions of service, they will charge you for a subscription.
However, they don’t do this and leave it quite clear in addition to its FAQ section.
What Are the Benefits of Using Credit Karma?
When creating an account, you can access all the platform’s services. Keep in mind that they are all free, and you will not be asked to pay any extra fee for one or the other:
- TransUnion credit score and report: Your score and report will be updated constantly, allowing you to see how it changes as you take actions that will affect your credit score.
- Equifax credit score and report: The site also offers you the Equifax credit score and report, in addition to the TransUnion ones.
- Credit card expenses: You can track the expenses you make via credit card by category and even know how much your interest cost is.
- Credit factors report: You can see a rating of each of the factors that make up your report, including the credit utilization rate, payment history, time of the accounts, derogatory comments, accounts total, and credit inquiries.
- Score Simulator: This tool will allow you to evaluate how certain actions affect your score.
- A free presentation of taxes: Although it is still somewhat crude, your system offers the possibility of preparing the tax return and, in its first year, had more than 900,000 users for this application.
Note– With this, you have free access to two of the three main credit analysis agencies, TransUnion and Equifax.
This gives you more consistent access to credit reports throughout the year, allowing you to monitor your credit report frequently and correct any errors or discrepancies.
What Is a Credit Report? | Financial Terms
How Do They Make Money with Credit Karma?
To offer a free service, Credit Karma stands up through the use of ads from its sponsors.
This way, you will notice information about other programs, products, and services that are not theirs on the app and in your emails.
Note– Configuring your profile can avoid receiving advertising in your mail.
Is Credit Karma Safe?
As with any credit service, you must be identified with your personal information, including your Social Security number.
Credit Karma also enhances the security of your information by following these measures:
- No information requested is permanently stored on your servers.
- They use a 128-bit encryption system.
- They have an independent certificate from DigiCert.
Besides, according to the terms and conditions, Credit Karma will not sell or rent your personal information to third parties in any way, added to the fact that the accounts are fully informed and are not open to making any transaction.
How Accurate Is Your Score in the App?
Credit rating companies like Credit Karma do their best to have FICO-like rating models, using Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian data to calculate the scores. So there is only one of the three main companies missing.
Normally you will notice a difference of around 1% in your score if you notice any difference.
Conclusion
The only common complaint about Credit Karma is that there are tons of advertising on the platform when you log into your account.
However, this is a minor nuisance, which is what happens instead of you paying for the service, which seems quite fair.
In general, Credit Karma is a useful service that can be part of your financial tools, offering you free calculations of Equifax and TransUnion that, otherwise, you would be paying at a rate of about 10-30 $/month. Try it out. You won’t regret it!
Visit Credit Karma