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While the Equifax breach was catastrophic, it underscored the crucial importance of regularly monitoring your credit. In today’s world, credit monitoring is a must to ensure there’s no suspicious or fraudulent activity linked to your personal information. Fortunately, you can monitor your credit for free, indefinitely.
What Does it Mean to “Monitor” Your Credit?
Monitoring your credit means regularly reviewing your credit report to ensure everything is accurate—watching for errors and, more importantly, any fraudulent accounts or activity.
It’s a good idea to check your credit yourself, and as we’ve noted, you’re entitled to a free copy of your report from each of the three major bureaus (Equifax, Experian, TransUnion) once per year. You don’t need to request them all at once; you can space them out and check one at a time throughout the year. However, in the wake of the Equifax breach, which exposed the vulnerabilities of the system, it’s wise to keep a closer eye on your credit on a more regular basis.
Equifax initially offered a free year of credit monitoring, but after backlash regarding its terms that waived customers’ right to join a class action lawsuit, they removed that clause. However, we’re still hesitant to trust their service. Besides, it was only available for a year, so if someone has access to your Social Security number, what’s stopping them from using it later? Thankfully, there are many other free tools and services that allow you to monitor your credit as long as you need.
Note: If you have a security freeze on your account, it might impact the registration process for signing up for any of these services. You may need to temporarily remove the freeze to complete registration.
What Are Some Better Alternatives?
We’ve discussed tools like Credit Sesame and Credit Karma, both excellent options for monitoring your credit for life. Credit Karma is particularly popular, but there are many other choices available to help you find the best fit. Remember, a free credit monitoring service will never ask for your credit card information to register. None of the services listed here will do that.
Credit Karma
We’ve highlighted Credit Karma as one of our top free services for tracking your credit and protecting your identity.
They provide weekly credit monitoring, offering a comprehensive report (with partnerships with bureaus, so your score stays intact) that covers activity and balances. You’ll also receive real-time alerts for new accounts or major changes, plus guidance to help you understand the details of your credit report.
What essential features should every credit monitoring service offer, and what makes Credit Karma stand out?
While some services only provide access to reports from one bureau, Credit Karma gives you access to two: TransUnion and Equifax. This is a nice bonus, as you can compare scores from both bureaus. Your credit report is more important than your score (it shows the actual activity), but it's still useful to know how your score may differ between two sources. Other benefits Credit Karma offers include:
An advice forum
A handy Credit Score Simulator (and other tools)
A feature to search for unclaimed money
Credit Karma remains a top contender, but there are other great options if, for some reason, you’re not a fan of their service.
Credit Sesame
Much like Credit Karma, Credit Sesame offers free access to your credit report and score. They also provide guidance to help you understand your report, along with practical advice and explanations of what various activities mean. And, as with Credit Karma, you’ll receive alerts for significant changes to your credit.
According to the Penny Hoarder, “one feature that Credit Sesame offers on its dashboard that I didn’t find on Credit Karma is a breakdown of your total debt.”
Having all your debt displayed in one place helps you keep track of what you owe and makes it easy to spot any major changes to your accounts. However, with real-time notifications, you’ll still receive an alert if someone checks your report or opens a new credit line.
Credit Sesame also offers tools to compare loan rates, but with competitors like Bankrate and Nerdwallet, this isn't a major advantage over Credit Karma. They provide free identity theft insurance, though as noted by Consumer Reports, it’s not particularly valuable and seems more like a tactic to get you to sign up for a paid, more comprehensive plan. These added benefits aren’t revolutionary, but the service remains a solid option for credit monitoring.
WalletHub
Like other services, WalletHub provides free credit scores and reports (from TransUnion), along with useful tips and advice to help you understand and improve your credit. You'll also receive alerts if anything on your credit report changes.
What makes WalletHub stand out is that it monitors your credit every day, 24/7. This is a big advantage because it lets you act quickly if something suspicious occurs. According to the site, you don’t need to worry about the impact of constant credit monitoring.
This service is designed so that your credit won’t be negatively affected. In other words, credit monitoring itself won’t harm your score, and WalletHub will notify you of any changes to your credit report that could potentially impact you.
In other words, your score won’t be negatively affected when they check your report. Additionally, WalletHub provides an excellent visual timeline of your credit history and details of each account listed on your report.
Mint.com
Mint, the well-known budgeting app, also provides credit monitoring. However, their free offering is somewhat basic compared to others. It includes monitoring from just one bureau, though they do send alerts when changes occur on your credit report or if someone checks it. For $16.99 a month, they offer a more thorough plan, but many of the services they provide are similar to those available for free elsewhere. You can see the differences in the screenshot below.
That said, Mint remains one of our top choices for budgeting. So, if you're already using it, you might consider adding its credit monitoring service alongside a more robust option.
AAA Membership
If you’re a AAA member, you can access their ProtectMyID® Essential service. While it’s relatively simple compared to other free options, it includes the following features:
Identity theft insurance that reimburses eligible expenses in case of identity theft ($10,000 for AAA Premier members)
Email alerts when significant changes occur, or a monthly report confirming no changes to your credit report
U.S.-based fraud resolution services, with a dedicated agent to assist you in investigating and resolving fraud
Help with canceling and replacing your cards if your wallet is lost or stolen
They offer a paid service with additional features, including a ‘daily internet scan’ of free websites to check for unauthorized use of your personal data.
Which Service Is Best?
All of these services are solid choices, but if you're looking for something more robust, we recommend WalletHub or CreditKarma.
Credit Sesame is still an excellent option, though CreditKarma provides a few extra features. WalletHub offers the same level of service as the others but updates you daily (I’ve used it myself, and they do a fantastic job of presenting the information and sending regular updates).
On the topic of security, you will need to provide your personal details to these services, but that’s part of the process of monitoring your credit (even if you only check it once a year at AnnualCreditReport.com). Just be sure the service you choose uses encryption to protect your data (all of the services mentioned above do).
If your TransUnion and Equifax accounts are under a credit freeze, you’ll need to temporarily lift it to use Credit Karma. However, once you’re registered, you can reapply the security freeze without disrupting your Credit Karma account,” their site explains. The freeze only affects Credit Karma during the registration process.
Don’t forget to enable account alerts with your bank and credit card companies as well. Most banks offer options to receive notifications when your balance drops below a set amount or if a transaction exceeds a specified limit. These alerts aren’t a substitute for credit monitoring, but they’re another way to stay on top of your finances.
Update: Earlier versions of this article suggested that WalletHub might share your data with third-party sites according to their Terms. WalletHub reached out to clarify and confirmed they DO NOT sell or rent your data to third-party sites. We’ve updated the article to reflect this.
