How You Can Get Your Credit Score For Free

Keeping tabs on your credit score can be a big help in spotting problems or issues before they become severe. All too often, though, that information comes at a price.

Requesting a copy of your FICO credit score can cost up to $20 each time, according to an article in Yahoo Finance. But luckily for today's consumers, a number of online resources offer free credit score estimates to people who create accounts with the sites.

That said, these websites and credit databases aren't all the same. For the most part, the differences lie in where each site gets the data it uses to give you a score. Yahoo Finance has a good breakdown, which we've summarized below:

• Credit Sesame. This site offers the "Experian National Risk Score," created from data collected exclusively by global information services group Experian, one of the three largest credit reporting agencies in the U.S.
• Credit.com. Like Credit Sesame, Credit.com uses Experian data to formulate its free scores. This site offers both the Experian credit score and a "VantageScore 3.0."
• Quizzle. This site uses data from Equifax, another of the largest three American consumer credit reporting agencies.
• Credit Karma. Using Credit Karma, you can get either a VantageScore or a TransRisk score, which are drawn from Transunion, the third of the three largest credit reporting agencies in the U.S.

If you're still not sure where to turn, Yahoo Finance has a simple recommendation: Check your scores on all of the sites. ("Why not? They're free!") Your results might not be exactly the same, but the range you fall in is more important than the exact number.