Prosper person-to-person lending offers up another perk – a free credit score for prospective borrowers. If you’re a lender already, it’s not too difficult to become a borrower. I just had to verify my address and phone numbers, and they offered up my credit profile. You will need to provide your Social Security number, though.
After signing up and logging in, just click on “Get a Loan” and then “Get a Personal Loan”. Note that this isn’t your FICO score, but an Experian ScoreX PLUS score based on your Experian credit report. (Some people refer to these as Fake-O scores, or FAKO, as they compete with FICO scores.) Prosper makes it pretty clear that this credit profile will not affect your credit score:
Having Prosper obtain your credit grade won’t affect your credit score. Although we are making a request for your credit score, we’re doing so at your instruction so no inquiries viewable by subsequent users of your credit report will be placed in your credit file. That means your credit score won’t be affected when you register or post a listing.
In other words, it is a soft pull. However, if you do fund a loan, a hard pull will be performed. Here’s a partial screenshot of my profile:
I’m not sure how the Experian score maps to FICO (they don’t officially), but it should give you a general idea of where you’re at. I’m glad to see I’m still at the highest AA grade even though I make money borrowing from credit cards, although admittedly I’ve been taking it easy recently. If you want access to your credit reports (not score), please check out the many ways to get a free credit report as well. Thanks to SlickDeals and reader Tim.
If you’re interested in lending on Prosper, grab your $25 bonus and a few tips from these posts:
- $25 Sign-Up Bonus For Lending On Prosper
- Prosper Review Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
- Lending Club Review, $25 Bonus Promotion (Prosper competitor)
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That’s great! I finally can tell the banks that want to sell me the identity protector that “No, I don’t need your service, coz I can see my credit score for free”
Thats a really nice perk for applying for a loan. Thanks for the heads up 😀
NOW THE TRUTH. My score with credit karma shows as 583, with credit sesame 625. This week I applied for a Target credit card and received a denial letter stating my score is only 464. I have been working on rebuilding my credit but this is just so everyone knows that these sites are not accurate at all. The only ones that are close to being accurate are for people with very good credit then the scores are similar but as for anyone trying to rebuild the only true way to get a true score is when you apply for credit as each lender has different scoring models they use.
Another way to get your score for free is through a WAMU credit card. It gets updated once a month.
I finally hit over 800, woohooo.
Is it possible the score they give is purposely better than an actual score so people believe they are in good shape to apply for a loan?
I view my credit score via WAMU credit card online. I believe they use TransUnion.
I’ve never been a big proponent of paying for FICO scores. They tend to vary anyways, so a range is fine with me.
Experian info is through Prosper, TransUnion info is available through WaMu. Now all we need is Equifax.
Isn’t the Equifax score the only true FICO score?
You can do this with Lending Club you get your actual FICO score, not the Experian ScoreX PLUS score.
I’ve been checking my propsper credit score range for around a year now…very convinient and nice. It allows you to check once every 30 days. If you check before 30 days has expired since the last time, it shows you a copy of your last one. I also used to have a Paypal Visa thru Providian services. Their credit card website also gave free credit scores through one of the bureaus although I can’t remember which. I cancelled the card after paying off all my cards a while back, and now I wish I kept it for that reason.
wamu bought Providian, so you can still get a free monthly credit score if you have a wamu credit card
im just curious, where do most people go to check their credit report/scores? any websites to recommend? and at what intervals do you check?
I tried to sign up from my existing lender account, but they asked for a fax with my drivers license, social security card, and a voided check. It’ll take me awhile to be able to verify if it works.
Thanks for the free tip. I’m pretty curios, so I might just go ahead and do that since it’s free. No way I’m going to pay for knowing something that is out of my hands anyway.
I have very shaky feelings about prosper.com I signed up to become a borrower @ propser and upon taking all of my perosnal information ssn#, bank account#, mailing address, dob everything to commit FRAUD. I was told after creating the account, the state I live in does not allow me to borrow. This appears to be fraudulent activity because there were several times the we site could have noted me that I could not borrow and I would not have submitted my information but it seems they were so GREEDY for my personal information for WWHAT?!!! It smells really suspicious to me
I tried it and it’s fine if you don’t mind if it’s not your FICO. However for assessing your credit before obtaining credit/loan, I like to check my actual FICO score as this is what most lenders use. But good resource if you’re looking for a fako score.
I subscribe to FICO scorewatch at myfico.com and I am so close to my 800 goal! My score is now 795 and holding steady. Pretty good considering a few years ago I my FICO was in the mid 600’s.
I found this through Consumerist just now, but I am not sure if the info is still correct. I’ve signed up to be a lender on Prosper and then tried to become a borrower to check my FICO (or fako, whatever). It’s asking for a lot more than just my address..they want income, work history, etc. Yeah I can provide all this, but a simple “gee I’m curious about my credit score, maybe if I spend 5 minutes on this site I can get an answer” has turned into 20. am I doing something wrong or have they changed their procedures?