Whenever people ask me about getting a free FICO score, it’ll often involve a long process where I’ll explain why they will most likely have to pay for their FICO credit score. The fact is, while there are a number of free services that offers a credit score base on your real credit history, one of the few places to easily get a real FICO credit score, and avoiding all those “fake scores” is to get your score straight from myFICO.

free FICO score 10 day trial

For a long time, myFICO offers FICO score for free via a trial service with their Score Watch product, but for whatever reason they discontinued this trial offer earlier this year. If you’re ever in need of the credit score and not just estimates from third parties, you will usually have to fork over anywhere from $12-$15 for these numbers. Thankfully, myFICO has now reintroduced their free trial offer (this time, a 10-day trial offer versus the previous 30-day offer).

Getting your free FICO score is rather easy:

  1. Visit the myFICO free trial sign-up page and sign-up for an account.
  2. Input your personal and payment information.
  3. You will not be charged until the trial offer ends, as noted by this page.
  4. myFICO will email you 3 days before your trial ends to remind you to cancel or keep your subscription.
  5. To cancel your account, simply use this form, select “I would like to cancel my production subscription” and then choose the Score Watch product.

Important: If you do decide to keep the Score Watch service, know that the service has a minimum of 3 month subscription!

Personally, the previous cancel option from the previous 30 day trial service was much easier, as you simply clicked a link and the service is cancelled. But myFICO still made it relatively easy when compared to other companies that has “free trial” offers, and it’s much appreciated that they email you in advance to warn you that the trial service is ending.  By using the contact form, you won’t have to deal with any phone reps that may be trying to upsale you to other services or hardball you to keep your service (none of that AOL never-cancel service tactic, thank-you-very-much).

Score Watch Summary Page

Though I’ve never fully written about the Score Watch service before (and I’ve been meaning to since 2006), its generally one of the better paid credit monitoring service available.  Beyond the fact that you’re getting a real free FICO score, the newly designed interface makes the monitoring service easier to navigate and provides the right educational information right where you need it.  For example, if you have a negative item in your credit report, myFICO points you to the right place to get it disputed.

The Score Watch summary page breaks down your Equifax credit score (click to enarlge pictured above), give you a quick run through of the four main FICO score ingredients: payment history, amount of debt, length of credit history, and amount of new credit.  My credit score as you can see above, is rather low, but myFICO has classified it as “good.”  This relatively low score is due to some recent balance transfer as I shuffle money around, something that should clear up quickly once the balances are paid off.  When compared with my old score of 790, it can be quite a difference!

If you’re interested in getting your FICO Score for free, give this free trial a whirl. Do remember that if you’re not interested in the service, request a day or two in advance to cancel the trial period just so you won’t be accidentally billed.  A FICO score is a handy reference if you’re in any financial situation that needs it: shopping for auto loan, mortgage, etc.; other than these situations, paying for a score due to curiosity probably isn’t worth it — but if you’re still dying to know, thankfully the free trial offer is back!

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