How Quickly Does a Credit Score Get Updated?

After paying off an account or making a payment, you may hope that your credit score has improved slightly. While your credit score is dynamic and always changing, it does not necessarily change right away. Understanding how the credit scoring process works can help you have realistic expectations in this process.

Credit Score Changes

Your credit score is changing all the time based on the information in your credit report. Your score can change every single day and even multiple times in one day, depending on what is going on in your financial life. As soon as information is added to your credit report, your score is automatically recalculated based on a formula that was created by the Fair Isaac Corporation. This FICO score accounts for several factors such as the amount of debt you have and your payment history.

Credit Report Updates

The information in your credit report is updated randomly with a joint effort between your creditors and the credit bureaus. When you do something that affects one of your accounts with your creditors, the creditor will eventually provide that information to the credit bureaus. Some creditors report this information once a month. Others only do it once every few months or once a quarter. It can also be reported at any point throughout the month because of the different billing cycles and due dates.

Quick Update

Although it could take a month or more to update your credit score, you can update it quicker if you are shopping for a loan of some kind. A service known as rapid rescoring helps you update your credit score in as little as 72 hours. When you work with a mortgage lender or an auto lender, you could pay an extra fee to initiate a rapid rescoring. At this point, the rescoring company looks at your credit report to see if there are any items that can be fixed to raise your score.

Planning in Advance

If you know that you will need to access your credit history to obtain a loan or for some other reason, it is usually in your best interest to plan ahead. This means that if you want to pay off an account or do something else that will affect your score, you should do it three or four months before you need to access your credit. This way, the creditor will have plenty of time to update your report and change your score.