What Affects Your Credit Score

Your credit score is a number lenders use to price risk. It's built from your credit history, and while the exact formulas are proprietary, the main ingredients are well known.

The five factors

• Payment history (~35%) — paying on time is the single biggest factor.
• Credit utilization (~30%) — how much of your available credit you're using.
• Length of credit history (~15%) — older accounts help.
• Credit mix (~10%) — a blend of loans and cards.
• New credit (~10%) — many recent applications can ding your score.

The fastest lever: utilization

Unlike history length, which you can't rush, utilization changes immediately. Keeping balances below 30% of your limits — and ideally under 10% — can lift your score within a cycle or two. Paying down balances or requesting a limit increase both help.

Check your utilization and payoff plan with the calculators below.