Best Credit Monitoring Services – Keep Your Credit Safe
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When buying my first place, I got a surprise from my mortgage company: They couldn't complete the closing until I rectified an unpaid debt discovered on my credit report. It turned out that a parking ticket I had received while traveling to San Diego three years prior (and completely forgot about) was reported as unpaid. It was less than $100, yet it appeared on my credit report. I had to quickly pay the bill and receive proof of payment, submit it to the credit reporting agencies—TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian—and have my report corrected to close on my new townhouse. It was one big pain in the you-know-what and delayed my closing, and it could have been avoided if I had checked my credit report first.
This is where credit monitoring services can come in handy. Not only can you stay current on your creditworthiness and learn of any mistakes or issues that need immediate attention with a company keeping an eye on things, but they can also spot identity theft. If a new card or loan appears, you'll know immediately and can stop the theft before it worsens.
So, which are the best credit monitoring services if you want total protection from identity fraud? These credit and identity monitoring services are some of the best out there.
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Overview of the best credit monitoring services
Credit monitoring service | Who it’s best for |
Experian Boost | People looking to monitor and improve their credit score for free |
IdentityForce | Uncompromising consumers willing to pay for credit and identity monitoring |
UltraSecure | Consumers who will pay for identity monitoring tools |
AnnualCreditReport.com | Barebones option for checking your credit report |
PrivacyGuard | Consumers who value choice and are willing to pay for credit and identity monitoring |
IdentityGuard | Budget-conscious consumers interested in a menu of options |
Credit Karma | Users repairing their credit who want free tools in an easy-to-use package |
LifeLock | Serious users who also want Norton360 cybersecurity |
Credit Saint takes action to fix unfair or inaccurate negative items harming your credit.
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Best credit monitoring services
Experian Boost
If you already monitor your credit score on Experian’s website for free, you'll want to enroll in Experian Boost. Experian Boost is a way to improve your credit score by including on-time rent and utility payments. Timeliness is a significant component of your credit report, so if you’re trying to build your credit history beyond your monthly credit card statement, Experian Boost is a must.
It’s also worth noting that Experian Boost provides additional credit monitoring tools beyond just letting you link phone bills or on-time payments to streaming services to your Experian credit report. Monitoring your FICO Score and your Experian-reported score can help you ensure that your score is where you want it to be before purchasing a house or a car.
Part of credit protection is playing a good offense and defense—something Experian Boost lets you do simultaneously. Experian Boost offers the best of both worlds in a free package, from getting alerts about suspicious activity to rewarding you for paying regular bills on time. While the Boost only affects your Experian score, it’s still worth doing for most individuals.
Perhaps best of all, Experian Boost is offered free as part of Experian’s basic plan. This means that you don’t have to pay additional fees to use the feature and can utilize Boost to transform your basic credit history into something more robust without opening a new credit line.
IdentityForce
IdentityForce is a Sontiq brand with several credit and identity monitoring services in its portfolio. UltraSecure, the lower-tiered version of its products, gets its review below, so we’ll focus on its top-of-the-line identity monitoring tool in this section, UltraSecure+Credit.
IdentityForce’s UltraSecure+Credit package comes chock full of features to help protect your personal information and your reputation online. From social media monitoring to VantageScore reports and details from the three big credit bureaus, IdentityForce’s UltraSecure+Credit service certainly rolls many different services into one package. IdentityForce even offers dark web monitoring and alerts you to change address forms or new credit line applications using your name or social security number.
Beyond this docket of personal information and notice of various alerts, IdentityForce also provides up to $1 million in insurance should you lose wages or need to cover other expenses resulting from identity theft.
All of these features are appealing, but they do come with a price tag. Unlike free credit monitoring services on this list—which offer fewer services—UltraSecure+Credit will run you about $24 a month, or $240 annually. Sometimes, you can qualify for a promotion that lowers this cost; however, your luck may vary. Even so, for people who want an immense array of fraud protection tools, IdentityForce is a robust, albeit pricy, option.
UltraSecure
If IdentityForce’s UltraSecure+Credit seems a little too rich for your taste, it’s worth looking into UltraSecure, a lesser version of the more fully-featured option. UltraSecure sacrifices credit reporting to lower its price, which may be the difference you need to make the membership cost work with your budget. You may not mind that compromise if you’re already using another free service on this list.
While you can’t monitor your credit lines and scores with UltraSecure, it still gives you many tools to monitor and control your identity, including a smart SSN tracker, social media monitoring, and real-time fraud monitoring. You’ll also have access to all of its features in an easy-to-use mobile app to take charge of a potential identity theft case even if you're away from your computer.
Another beneficial feature of its more expensive cousin that you can enjoy with UltraSecure is the $1 million worth of fraud insurance. While not everyone will be in a situation where this feature is useful, it’s nice that IdentityForce still includes it in the lower-tiered version of its service.
These features add up to $18 monthly or $180 a year. Again, that cost may be too high for some. Still, if you’re already monitoring your credit using a different service and only need the identity tools, it’s a choice that doesn’t cause you to pay for redundant features.
Annualcreditreport.com
When searching for a service on Google, it’s not always the best sign when Google auto-fills your search query with phrases like “legit or a scam?” Even so, while Annualcreditreport.com’s user interface may remind you of the dawn of the internet, it’s a government-approved way to access your credit reports each year for free.
Using AnnualCreditReport.com doesn’t require signing up or anything. Instead, you’ll just fill out some personal information and answer a few security questions to verify your identity. From there, you can download your credit report from each major credit bureau. This tool can be pretty beneficial, especially if you’re looking for discrepancies between each report.
AnnualCreditReport.com has no alerts or identity fraud monitoring tools other services have. If you’re at low risk for identity theft and already have a high credit score, that’s probably not a problem, but it’s worth noting that this website (like its aesthetic) is pretty bare-bones.
If you need to monitor your credit report often, Annualcreditreport.com is an excellent option for checking your score.
PrivacyGuard
PrivacyGuard offers a few different services for consumers wanting to monitor their credit and personal information. As such, it’s a good option for users interested in only one service who may at some point wish to purchase credit monitoring and identity theft from a company they already have an account with.
PrivacyGuard’s Credit Protection plan offers monitoring and score tracking with each of the three major bureaus, financial calculators, and a credit score simulator. Should you be the victim of ID fraud, you’ll also be paired with a dedicated agent to help you navigate your fraud case. PrivacyGuard Credit Protection will cost you about $20 a month.
On the other end of the spectrum is PrivacyGuard’s Total Protection plan. In addition to credit monitoring, this plan provides dark web scanning and a host of monitoring tools for your social security number and information on your driver’s license and passport. You can sign up to receive alerts via text or email, and PrivacyGuard’s Total Protection plan also comes with $1 million in fraud insurance. You’ll pay about $25 for the plan.
Identity Guard
Not to be confused with IdentityForce, Identity Guard is another identity monitoring service that searches for changes in your credit report and personal information.
Another major perk of Identity Guard is its tools that proactively protect you when shopping online or browsing the web. This can keep your private data from getting stolen or compromised in the first place, saving you a lot of trouble. Of course, if your data gets compromised due to a breach before subscribing to Identity Guard, you’ll be alerted when it surfaces online.
If you only want basic identity theft monitoring, the basic plan offered by Identity Guard only costs $6.67 a month. The Total Plan from Identity Guard costs $11.99 a month and includes credit monitoring from the three major bureaus and a TransUnion-calculated monthly credit score. For $17.99 a month, you can purchase Identity Guard’s Ultra Plan, which features everything in the Value and Total Plans, plus tools to help you monitor your 401k, investment accounts, and credit and debit cards. You’ll also get credit reports from each bureau and monitor for criminal offenses, among other offenses.
One perk of Identity Guard is that they offer family prices at a discounted rate in addition to individual pricing. This can save a family of four or a newly married couple a lot each month since the pricing is significantly discounted. Family pricing for the Value Plan is $10 a month, with the Total and Ultra plans costing $17.99 and $23.99 monthly, respectively.
Credit Karma
Credit Karma is probably this list's most heavily advertised credit monitoring service. It offers many features free of charge but also comes with many advertisements and credit card offers, which some users may find annoying.
Even so, Credit Karma makes understanding your credit report—and the factors that impact it—plain and simple, with bright, colorful graphics. Credit Karma’s dashboard displays two different scores for you, one with the TransUnion model and one with Equifax’s model. You can also view all accounts playing a role in your score, from credit accounts to auto and home loans.
One benefit of Credit Karma is that it suggests ways to improve your finances and better manage your debt. For example, many of its offers are curated based on your approval odds and other factors, such as your payment timeliness and existing credit accounts. This means that whether you’re looking at taking out a personal loan to consolidate debt or a new credit card with a 0% APR balance transfer offer, you know that when your credit gets checked, you’re unlikely to have your score impacted without approval.
As far as identity monitoring services, Credit Karma’s offerings are a bit scant. Even so, if you’re looking for a way to lock your credit and monitor your personal information for inclusion in data breaches, the free options through Credit Karma are better than nothing.
LifeLock
While all of LifeLock's products offer a mixture of identity theft and credit monitoring.
Your options with LifeLock come in three tiers: LifeLock Standard, LifeLock Advantage, and LifeLock Ultimate Plus. The least expensive option, LifeLock Standard, will cost you $11.99 monthly. The standard plan comes with SSN monitoring, credit monitoring through Equifax, stolen funds reimbursement of up to $25,000, and up to $1 million for lawyers and experts.
LifeLock Advantage includes everything in the standard plan: monthly access to your Equifax report and score, bank account, and credit card activity alerts. This tier costs $34.99 monthly. LifeLock Ultimate Plus is the most expensive of all of LifeLock’s tiers, ups the ante by providing $1 million of stolen funds reimbursement and monitoring your credit report across all three bureaus. It includes all the other features of lesser tiers and costs $69.99 a month.
Credit Saint takes action to fix unfair or inaccurate negative items harming your credit.
- 90-day money-back guarantee
- Free consultation
- 200k happy customers
- 19 years experience
- 11,000+ five-star reviews
Summary of best credit monitoring services
Credit monitoring service | Credit monitoring | Identity monitoring | Stolen Funds Reimbursement | Cost |
Experian Boost | Yes, Equifax only | No | No | Free |
IdentityForce | Yes | Yes | Yes, up to $1 million | $24/mo; $240/annually |
UltraSecure | No | Yes | Yes, up to $1 million | $18/mo; $180/annually |
AnnualCreditReport.com | Yes | No | No | Free |
PrivacyGuard | Yes, depending on tier | Yes, depending on tier | Yes, up to $1 million | $20-$25/mo, depending on tier |
Identity Guard | Yes | Yes | No | $6.67-$17.99 depending on tier |
Credit Karma | Yes, Equifax and TransUnion | Yes | No | Free |
LifeLock | Yes | Yes | Yes, $25k-$1M, depending on tier | $11.99-$69.99, depending on tier |
FAQs
Do credit monitoring and identity monitoring services protect me from identity theft?
While the above services are helpful tools in lowering your risk of identity theft and addressing identity fraud as soon as it is detected, they cannot completely eliminate your risk of identity theft.
Do credit monitoring services fix bad credit?
No. Credit monitoring services can help you determine how to boost your credit score; however, they are not a replacement for credit repair services.
Are credit monitoring services safe to use?
It’s understandable to be cautious about sharing sensitive information like your SSN and driver’s license number. The credit and identity monitoring services in this article are secure to use and follow the latest in data encryption technology to keep your personal information safe.
Why you should (or shouldn't) use credit monitoring services?
While you might not like the idea of paid services or premier plans for information that is part of many people’s public records, convenience and peace-of-mind, credit monitoring services can be worth the cost. Maintaining multiple accounts across the three major credit reporting agencies can be cumbersome, and the ease of seeing each score in one place as accurately as possible is worth the money for some people.
When you add that some identity theft protection services also come with identity theft insurance and help with identity restoration, these products become even more valuable. Nobody wants to face a daunting task like filing for identity fraud by themselves, and the right identity theft insurance can not only help with reimbursement for stolen funds. Still, it can also help you file the appropriate court records.
The bottom line
Whether or not you use credit monitoring or identity monitoring services is ultimately up to you. Some people will find much value in using paid services and appreciate features like stolen funds reimbursement and seeing each credit bureau score in one dashboard. On the other hand, some people may not want to pay for the cost to see this information week to week. Using some of the free options on the above list makes more sense in that case.
Ultimately, there are situations where it will make sense for you to use a free or a paid version of any of the above credit monitoring and identity theft services. Just because one product doesn’t fit your needs now doesn’t mean it won’t in the future, so it’s a good idea to keep the above information in mind should you ever need it.
Credit Saint takes action to fix unfair or inaccurate negative items harming your credit.
- 90-day money-back guarantee
- Free consultation
- 200k happy customers
- 19 years experience
- 11,000+ five-star reviews
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Writer
Brent Ervin-Eickhoff is a Chicago-based writer, stage director, and filmmaker with a background in digital marketing and content creation. In addition to Joy Wallet, Brent has written for Complex, Volkswagen, HowlRound, Picture this Post, and Third Coast Review, among others. He currently serves as the Associate Director of Marketing for Content Creation at Court Theatre at the University of Chicago. Brent graduated from Ball State University with Academic Honors in Writing.
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