Credit scoring feels arbitrary until you see the weights, and then most of it becomes obvious. A score is a prediction: in the CFPB’s words, “a prediction of your credit behavior, such as how likely you are to pay a loan back on time, based on information from your credit reports.” Most scores run 300 to 850.
FICO publishes what it weighs: payment history 35%, amounts owed 30%, length of credit history 15%, new credit 10%, credit mix 10%. Two categories are nearly two-thirds of the answer, and both are behaviours rather than circumstances.
Where to start, depending on where you are
You have no credit history. This is a different problem from bad credit, and an easier one — the model isn’t judging you, it has nothing to read. Start with building credit from scratch, and if a card isn’t an option, the routes that don’t need one.
You have a score and want it higher. Read what actually increases a score and what’s a myth first, because a good share of popular advice (carrying a balance, closing old cards) makes things worse.
You need movement before a deadline. Only utilisation responds quickly. How to raise a score fast covers the moves that work in a cycle or two and, just as usefully, the ones that don’t.
Three things worth knowing before anything else
You don’t have one score. Different bureaus hold different data; different models read it differently. Check all of them, because an error on one file can drag one score while the others look clean.
Checking your own score costs nothing. It’s a soft inquiry and doesn’t register in the model. The myth that it hurts is actively harmful, because it stops people finding mistakes.
Time is a real ingredient. Length of credit history is 15% of the score and cannot be accelerated by any product or service. Anyone selling speed is selling the reporting delay or selling nothing at all.
A note for readers outside the US
The weights above are FICO’s, and FICO is American. British and Canadian bureaus run their own scales and their own calculations, and the numbers don’t convert. What does carry across all three countries is the ordering: pay on time, don’t use too much of your limit, and let accounts age.
Every figure on these pages is dated and sourced, because credit guidance ages badly and confidently wrong advice in this category is expensive.
