Free Instant Credit Reports - Which Ones Can You Trust?

It's really pretty funny when you think about it, but with so many people clamoring to get their hands on free instant credit reports, you'd probably think that there are just millions of sites out there ready, willing, and able to deliver them up to you and me.

That's partly true. There are an absolute ton of websites out there that do offer credit reports. But now here's the problem with most of them -- they either don't offer an accurate report, or they don't offer the true credit score that you need to know how lenders see you.

So, not all free credit report cites are created equal. That much is obvious. We're going to get to the sites I recommend for getting your true free credit report in just a second. But first, let's talk about some things that you need to watch out for when you start evaluating all the offers out there.

If you've spent any time at all going to some of the sites that offer free credit reports, I'm sure that you've seen that 99.9% of them will offer you a free trial to a credit monitoring service in exchange for providing the free report.

This is absolutely fine in most cases. For a lot of people this is actually going to be something that you really should consider. I understand that maybe all you're looking for is that immediate report and score so that you know exactly where you stand.

However, if you are in the middle of considering a major purchase such as for a new car, or maybe you're applying for a mortgage, a home refinance, or something like that, then having this kind of monitoring and reporting service can actually be a huge help.

What you want to avoid at all costs is a sudden surprise that shows up on your report right before you're about to sign your final papers. (Believe me, I know what that's like, and you definitely want to avoid it.)

But of course that's just my opinion. Whether or not you think you need this kind of thing is totally up to you. All I'm asking you to do is to consider the possibility that you might actually want to have this kind of tool in your pocket should any unforeseen circumstances pop up.

Anyway, so those are the basics for what you need to know in order to get a free instant credit report. One thing I didn't mention is that you want to make sure that your score is actually coming from a legitimate source.

Some sites will offer a free score along with your report, but never tell you that the score is actually just an estimate and not something official that is actually used by lenders. This kind of thing doesn't really do you any good. I mean theoretically, you could probably estimate your own score. But would that give you a true picture of your credit worthiness? Of course it wouldn't.

So now that we've covered all that, the final thing you need are some actual reviews of free credit report sites so that you can avoid all the scams out there.