credit

What Makes Up a Credit Score (and What Doesn't)

By MoneyMattersDaily Editorial · Published October 17, 2026 · 7 min read

Most people know a credit score matters and very few know what’s inside it. That gap is where myths live: that your income raises it, that checking it lowers it, that a store card and a bank card are scored differently because of who issued them. The reality is simpler and more specific. A score is a formula applied to the information in your credit report, and the formula has a short, published list of inputs and an equally clear list of things it ignores.

Who this is for, and who it isn’t

It’s for: anyone who wants to know what a credit score is made of before deciding what to do about it, and anyone who has heard conflicting advice.

It’s not for: a step-by-step plan to raise your score. For that, see what actually hurts your credit score, credit utilization explained, and how to build credit from scratch. This post describes US scoring; if you’re in the UK, see how UK credit scores work. This is general information, not personalized financial advice.

What a credit score is

The US Federal Trade Commission describes a credit score as a number, typically between 300 and 850, that estimates how likely you are to repay a loan on time. The FTC says the FICO score is the model most lenders use. Lenders use scores for credit cards, auto loans and mortgages, including the interest rate you’re offered. Cellphone companies use them, and so do auto and home insurers, which often use a related “insurance score” or “credit-based insurance score.”

Three layers are easy to confuse:

1. Your credit report: the record of your credit accounts and how you’ve handled them.
2. The scoring model: a formula, such as a FICO or VantageScore version, that turns that record into a number.
3. A lender’s decision: which can use a score and other information too.

FICO says its scores are calculated only from credit report data, with one exception: UltraFICO, which can also use banking data you give permission to share.

The five things inside a FICO Score

FICO publishes the categories and their approximate weights. As of its page updated October 2026:

Two details are worth knowing. On new credit, FICO says only inquiries from the last 12 months count, though they stay on your report for two years. And FICO adds a caveat: the importance of the categories may vary from one person to another. Because scores change as the whole report changes, it also says you can’t measure one factor’s exact impact without looking at the entire report. Treat the percentages as the shape of the formula, not a promise about any one action.

VantageScore describes it differently

FICO isn’t the only model. VantageScore, the other well-known one, lists five factors on its consumer page, ranked by influence rather than by percentage:

• Payment history: extremely influential
• Total credit usage: highly influential
• Credit mix and experience: highly influential
• New accounts opened: moderately influential
• Balance and available credit: less influential

VantageScore doesn’t publish numeric weights on that page, so these labels can’t be lined up against FICO’s percentages. What they do show is the overlap: both models treat paying on time as the most important input, and both look at how much of your credit you’re using. The FTC notes that scoring systems calculate scores in different ways, with some including factors others leave out and weighing them differently, which is one reason the number can differ between sources.

What’s not in your score

This is the part that clears up the most myths. FICO lists what its scores do not consider:

• Race, color, religion, national origin, sex and marital status. FICO says US law prohibits credit scoring from considering these. Public assistance receipt and exercising consumer rights under the Consumer Credit Protection Act are also excluded.
• Age. FICO says other types of scores may consider it, but FICO Scores don’t.
• Income, salary, occupation, job title, employer, date employed or employment history.
• Where you live.
• The interest rate on a particular credit card or other account.
• Child or family support obligations. FICO says these accounts are bypassed in the calculation.
• Certain inquiries: ones you start yourself, including when you check your own report, promotional inquiries from prescreened offers, administrative inquiries such as a lender reviewing an existing account, and requests marked as coming from employers. See does checking your own credit score hurt it.
• Information not in your credit report.
• Public records other than bankruptcy, such as tax liens and civil judgments. FICO says only bankruptcy records appear on credit reports and affect its scores.
• Information not proven predictive of future credit performance.
• Participation in credit counseling of any kind.

One caution. “Not in the score” doesn’t mean “not seen by the lender.” FICO notes that lenders may still consider factors like income and employment in their own decisions, and the FTC says mortgage lenders’ models may also consider your down payment, total debt and income. So income can shape whether you’re approved or what limit you get, even though it never enters the formula.

Score ranges

FICO describes its scores as running from 300 to 850 and groups them like this:

These are FICO’s bands. Other models can use different ranges and labels, and lenders set their own cutoffs. FICO also says a lender or insurer may use a different FICO version, or another type of score, than the ones sold on its own site. That’s why the score in your banking app and the one a lender pulls can differ, even on the same day.

What to do with this

• Check your report, not just your score. The score is built from the report, so errors there flow into it. The FTC says you can get a free report from each bureau every year, and weekly online through AnnualCreditReport.com. If something is wrong, see how to dispute an error on your credit report.
• Put effort where the weight is. Paying on time and keeping balances well below limits cover the two biggest categories in FICO’s description.
• Be careful with “free” scores. The FTC says you often have to pay for scores, and some free offers require a credit monitoring subscription, so check for charges.
• Don’t expect one number everywhere. Compare scores from the same source over time, not across different apps.
• If you’re starting out, secured credit cards explained covers one way to begin building a file.

Common mistakes

• Thinking income is in the score. It isn’t, though lenders may weigh it separately.
• Thinking checking your own score lowers it. Inquiries you start yourself aren’t counted, per FICO.
• Treating the percentages as exact. FICO says importance can vary person to person.
• Comparing numbers from different models. A different version or model can give a different result.
• Assuming “not in my score” means “invisible to lenders.” Income and employment can still affect approvals.
• Paying for a score without noticing the subscription.
• Ignoring errors in the report, since the report is the raw material.

Getting started

Pull your free credit reports and read them line by line: accounts, balances, limits, payment history and inquiries. That’s the real input to the formula. Fix any mistakes, set up automatic payments so nothing is ever late, and keep your card balances low relative to their limits. Everything else in this post is context for those few habits.

Last updated October 2026. Weights, exclusions and ranges come from FICO’s own education pages (the “what’s in your score” page showed an October 2026 update date; the “what’s not in your score” page is undated); the factor labels come from VantageScore’s consumer page (undated); the description of scores, uses and free reports comes from the FTC’s Credit Scores page (last modified May 2026). Models and versions change and lenders use different ones, so your own numbers may differ. This is general information, not personalized financial advice.