Guide
Hard and soft inquiries
Which pulls are scored, how rate-shopping windows work, and the two-year versus one-year distinction.
Hard versus soft, and why the distinction matters less than you think
A soft inquiry happens when someone looks at your file without you applying for credit. It appears on the copy of the report you see and on nobody else’s. It is never scored. A hard inquiry happens when you apply for something and a lender pulls your file to decide. It is visible to other lenders and it is scored.
The one that matters most
Checking your own credit is always a soft inquiry. It has never lowered anybody’s score and it never will. This is probably the single most widespread false belief about credit, and it stops people from looking at their own file — which is exactly the behaviour that lets errors sit for years.
Soft — not scored
- Checking your own credit, on any site
- A pre-approved offer you did not apply for
- An existing lender reviewing your account
- A landlord or employer check, with your permission
- Insurance quoting in most states
- A card issuer’s pre-qualification tool
Hard — scored
- A credit card application
- A mortgage or refinance application
- An auto loan application
- A personal loan application
- A credit limit increase request, at some issuers
- Some utility and mobile contracts
What a hard inquiry actually costs
Less than the internet thinks. New credit is roughly 10% of the FICO model, and inquiries are only part of that 10% — the rest is the age of your newest account and how many accounts you have recently opened. For most files, a single hard inquiry costs a small handful of points, and the effect decays.
Two timings are worth remembering and they are different from each other. A hard inquiry reports for two years, so it is visible to a human underwriter for two years. It is generally scored for about one. That distinction is why an inquiry from fourteen months ago can be visible on the report and yet be doing nothing to the number.
Rate-shopping windows
Scoring models know the difference between someone opening four credit cards and someone comparing four mortgage quotes. Multiple hard inquiries of the same type — mortgage, auto, student loan — inside a short window are generally treated as a single inquiry.
The window length depends on the scoring version: older FICO versions use 14 days, newer ones use 45. Because you do not know which version a given lender is using, the safe rule is to do all your rate shopping inside a fourteen-day block. Do not spread it over two months.
Note the qualifier: of the same type. A mortgage pull and a credit card pull in the same fortnight are two separate inquiries, not one.
When an inquiry is worth disputing
An inquiry is disputable when it was made without a permissible purpose — you did not apply, you did not authorise it, and no existing account relationship justifies it. That is a real thing and it does happen, particularly at car dealerships that submit an application to multiple lenders without saying so.
It is also, in practice, one of the least valuable disputes to win. The inquiry was costing a few points at most and may already have stopped being scored. Spending your thirty-day window on it while a wrong date of first delinquency sits three lines below is the wrong trade.
The exception worth taking seriously: an inquiry you genuinely do not recognise, from a lender you have never dealt with, is a possible identity-theft signal. In that case the inquiry is not the problem — it is the symptom, and the response is a fraud alert or a freeze, not a dispute letter.
The ninety-day rule before a mortgage
If a mortgage application is anywhere in your next year, treat the ninety days before it as a freeze on your own behaviour. In that window:
- Do not apply for a credit card, a store card, or a car.
- Do not close an old account.
- Do not request a limit increase unless the issuer confirms in advance it is a soft pull.
- Do keep paying everything on time, and do keep reported balances low.
Underwriters re-pull credit shortly before closing. A new account that appears between approval and closing can cost you the loan, and that is a much larger problem than five points.