Credit

Credit scores: who is keeping score on you?

Q: Why did my credit score drop for no reason?

Common causes: a higher than usual balance at the monthly snapshot, an old account closing, coming off the electoral roll after moving, or the agency changing its scoring model. If your report itself is unchanged, a small drop is noise.

Q: What credit score do I need for a phone contract?

There is no published pass mark. Networks run their own checks and mostly want a stable address and no recent missed payments. A thin file at 18 usually still gets a contract.

Q: Is there one true credit score?

No. Experian scores out of 1250, Equifax out of 1000 and TransUnion out of 710, and lenders run their own private models on the raw file. The visible score is a consumer product; the file underneath is what matters.

Somewhere in three office buildings you have never visited, three companies you never signed up with keep files about you. What you owe, what you have paid, where you have lived, who you asked for money and when. You cannot opt out. You were never asked. The number they squeeze out of that file will help decide your flat, your phone, your car and your mortgage. Worth ten minutes of your life, then.

The short answer

A credit score is a number summarising how you have handled borrowing, calculated from a file that three private agencies keep on you: Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. Lenders use it, plus their own maths, to decide whether you look profitable and reliable. It does not measure wealth, goodness or intelligence. It measures your paper trail.

Three referees, three different numbers

First surprise: there is no single "your credit score". Each agency keeps its own file on you and scores it on its own scale, and the scales do not even match.

Current scales, checked 25 August 2026 against each agency's own published bands.

On today's scales, "good" starts around 861 with Experian (out of 1250), 531 with Equifax (out of 1000), and 604 with TransUnion (out of 710). Do not memorise those. Notice instead what the mismatch tells you: the number is not a measurement of you. It is each company's own product, on each company's own ruler.

Not everything is what it seems, part one: the score you see is not the score they use

The score in your banking app or on a checker site is a consumer product, made to be looked at. When you actually apply for credit, the lender pulls your raw file and runs it through their own private scoring model, which they do not publish and which weighs things their way. Two lenders can look at the same file and decide differently.

So the famous three digit (now four digit) number is best understood as a weather forecast for the real decision, not the decision. Keep the file clean and every lender's private model will like you. Chase the number for its own sake and you are polishing a dashboard.

Part two: the ruler keeps stretching

In January 2026, Experian changed its scale from 999 to 1250. Overnight, millions of scores jumped by hundreds of points. Nobody became more reliable in their sleep. Equifax did the same in 2021, moving from 700 to 1000. A bigger number feels better, and feeling better is part of what these products sell you. Sound familiar? It should: it is the same lesson as our inflation page. When a number everyone trusts changes, ask who changed it, and why.

Part three: what the score actually rewards

Here is the quiet part said out loud. Someone who has never borrowed, pays cash, and wants nothing from any bank does not get a perfect score. They get a thin file: not enough data to judge, which in practice reads as risk. The system gives its best marks not to people who avoid debt, but to people who use debt regularly and repay it flawlessly: the profitable-yet-safe.

That is not a reason to boycott the game. You will want a flat, a phone contract, maybe one day a mortgage, and the file is the toll booth in front of all three. It is a reason to play the game deliberately, at minimum cost, with your eyes open about whose game it is.

Trap ahead: score anxiety is a market

Once you know a number is being kept on you, checking it becomes compulsive, and an industry exists to serve the compulsion: paid "premium" score subscriptions, credit building products with monthly fees, apps that ping you when the number twitches. Your score wobbling five points is noise, not news. You never need to pay to see your own data: every agency provides your statutory report free, and the free checker services are enough for anyone.

The moves

Screenshot this bit

Get on the electoral roll the day you turn 18. It is the single easiest point of confirmed identity on your file, and it is free.
Let one small account age gracefully. A phone contract or one credit card, used lightly, paid in full by direct debit, quietly writes years of perfect history. Boring wins.
Keep usage well under the limit. A £500 limit with £450 on it reads as strain, even if you repay. Staying under about a quarter of the limit reads as control.
Never cluster applications. Each real application is a hard search other lenders can see. Several in a few months reads as desperation. Use soft search eligibility checkers first: they leave no visible mark.
Read your actual file once a year, at all three agencies, free. Errors happen, and errors about you are yours to dispute. You are legally entitled to your statutory report without paying.
Never pay anyone to "fix" your score. Anything a repair firm can legally do, you can do yourself, free, in an afternoon.

Check it yourself

Experian's own bands. experian.co.uk: what is a good credit score: scale of 1250, with Good starting at 861. Checked 25 August 2026.
The Equifax rescale. Which?: Equifax revamps credit score scale: 700 became 1000 in June 2021, bands listed.
Checking is free and harmless. MoneyHelper: how to check your credit report: "you can check your credit report as often as you like, and it won't affect your score."
Why lenders court you at all. Our page on how banks create money: the file exists to find the profitable borrowers.

Questions people ask

Do I have a credit score at 18?

Barely. At 18 your file is nearly empty, so any score is provisional guesswork. That is normal and not a punishment: everyone starts thin. Electoral roll, a bank account, a phone contract paid on time, and the file starts filling. Within a year or two of boring reliability you will have a real history.

Does checking my credit score lower it?

No. Checking your own score or report is a soft search and never affects it, however often you look. The searches that leave visible marks are hard searches, which happen when you actually apply for credit. The myth survives because it confuses those two.

Why did my credit score drop for no reason?

Common causes: a card balance was higher than usual when the agency took its monthly snapshot, an old account closed and shortened your history, you came off the electoral roll by moving, someone applied for credit at your address, or the agency simply changed its scoring maths. If nothing on your actual report has changed, a small drop is dashboard noise, not a verdict.

What credit score do I need for a phone contract?

There is no published pass mark: each network runs its own check, and they mostly care that you exist at a stable address and have no recent missed payments. A thin file at 18 usually still gets a contract, sometimes with a deposit or a cheaper handset first. Six months of paying it on time then becomes your first credit history.

Is there one true credit score?

No. Three agencies keep three files on three scales, and every lender runs its own private model on top. The version you can see is a consumer product. What is real, and worth guarding, is the file underneath: the record of what you borrowed and how you repaid.