Credit Sesame is an advertising-supported service that gets you your credit score for free. No hidden fees, singers in Renaissance garb or gotchas. It’s not quite your FICO, but it’s close.

Similar to Credit Karma, but drawing from your Experian data rather than your TransUnion credit report, Credit Sesame runs a credit scoring algorithm over your credit history and spits out a score. As compared to the FICO score, it’s on a scale from 360 to 840, rather than 300 to 850.

This score comes in handy if you’re generally curious about your credit standing but don’t feel like forking over the bucks for the official FICO score. And just like when you normally buy your own score, checking this score does not count as an inquiry on your credit so you won’t experience that temporary ding to your score like usual.

If you’re trying to rebuild credit, you can use a service like Credit Sesame or Credit Karma to track it month to month and it will go up as your credit improves, so it gives you a baseline to gauge your progress with. But if you’re getting ready to buy a house or take out another kind of major loan, you’ll want to get a hold of your actual FICO score. Just make sure you don’t accidentally sign up for a useless month-to-month billing service that’s hard to escape.

Credit Sesame [Official Site]
Free Credit Scores (Seriously, They’re Really Free) [Mint Life]
Finovate Fall Day 1: Financial voyeurism and a free credit score [ConsumerReports.org]

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