A soft credit check occurs when someone pulls your credit report, but it isn’t used to decide whether to offer you credit. In most cases, soft credit checks are for informational or promotional purposes.
Here are a few other differences between hard and soft inquiries:
– Others who check your credit report can see hard inquires. Only you can see soft inquiries.– Hard inquiries have an impact on your credit score. Soft inquiries don’t.– Hard inquiries require your approval. Soft inquiries can be run without your knowledge.
Why Does a Hard Inquiry Affect Your Credit When Soft Credit Checks Don’t?
The reason hard inquiries affect your score when soft inquiries don’t is because the number of hard inquiries could suggest that you’re a risk to a potential lender.
You can run a soft inquiry on your own credit by checking your score or getting a copy of your report. Here are a few ways you can do so:- Get a free credit score from AnnualCreditReport.com. - Sign up for ExtraCredit. - Sign up for our Credit Report Card.
If you see a hard inquiry on your report that you didn’t approve, you can challenge it. Write a letter to the credit bureau noting you didn’t give permission for the inquiry and asking it to investigate and make appropriate edits to your report.