Which Credit Bureau will be used to pull your credit report?

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Which Credit Bureau will be used to pull your credit report?

I recently wrote a Monkey Miles Monday Memo that illustrated the 5 factors that impact your credit score. You will have a different score from each of the 3 major credit bureaus: Transunion, Equifax, and Experian. You may wonder why each credit bureau has a different score for you? That’s a great question. While each bureau will have it’s own specific metrics, one of the biggest factors is how often a report is pulled – this impacts your “recent inquiries” number. This pull is referred to as a “hard pull.” and each hard pull drops your score. This is why people will try and combine inquiries or apply more than once on a day: an app-o-rama if you will 😉 When you apply for a credit card, loan, lease, etc the lender will pull a report from one of those 3 bureaus, but which one? I use a resource page that is full of anecdotal, wiki-style, information to see just which bureau will be used to generate a report. How to find which credit bureau will be used to pull your credit report.

A quick reminder: the 5 factors

Credit Score Factors

I use Creditboards “pull database 

I recently applied for the Chase Sapphire Reserve, in branch, despite being at 6/24. You can read about my entire experience, but I got denied. My report was pulled from Experian. I knew this would be the case because I searched creditboards ahead of time and saw these results.

Credit boards search engine

Which Credit Bureau will be used to pull your credit report

What you’ll see are the results for my specific state and the creditor

  • Creditor
  • Zip
  • Date
  • approved or denied
  • limit

Which Credit Bureau will be used to pull your credit report

Here’s a look at Citi:

slightly different results and looks to vary between city/zip code

Which Credit Bureau will be used to pull your credit report

Hope this helps!

Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.

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Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card


4.8
4.8/5
The Chase Sapphire Preferred® is a great starter card that earns Premium Ultimate Rewards that can be transferred into over a dozen partners many of which are US based including Hyatt, Southwest, United, IHG, and Marriott.

Welcome Offer

60k Points after $4k spend in 3 months

Annual Fee

$95

Points Earned

Transferrable Chase Ultimate Rewards

  • 3x on dining
    •  including eligible delivery services for takeout
  • 3x on select streaming services
  • 3x on online grocery purchases
    • (excluding Target, Walmart and wholesale clubs)
  • 5x on all travel purchased through Chase Travel Portal
  • 2x on all other travel
  • $50 Annual Credit on hotel stays purchased via Chase Travel
    • The begins immediately for new cardmembers and after your account anniversary for existing cardmembers
  • 10% Anniversary Bonus
    • Every year you keep the card, your total spend will yield a 10% points bonus. If you spend $10k in a year, you’ll get 1k bonus points
  • Chase Sapphire Preferred® continues to redeem at 1.25c in the Chase Travel Portal and the slew of other benefits remain in tact including primary rental car insurance, purchase protections, etc.
  • Points are transferrable to 13 Ultimate Rewards partners
  • Redeem in the Chase Travel center for 1.25 cents per point
  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Suite of Travel and Purchase Coverage
    • Primary rental car coverage is my favorite

We keep an up to date spreadsheet that lists the best ever offers: You can find that spreadsheet here.

Historically 80k is a very, very good offer and hit in both 2022 and 2023. In 2021, we saw the offer hit an all time high of 100k. Who knows if that will ever come back.

Main Cast: 

Cards that earn flexible points and should be used on the bulk of your purchases.

Supporting Cast:

Cards that earn fixed points in the currency of the airline/hotel and can not be transferred at attractive rates. These cards yield benefits that make it worth keeping, but not necessarily worth putting a lot of your everyday spend on. 

The Chase Sapphire Preferred® is exceptional starter card and offers transferrable Ultimate Rewards, and pairs well with other Chase cards.

If you carry this card alongside Chase’s cashback cards like the Chase Freedom Flex℠and Chase Freedom Unlimited® or the business versions: Ink Business Cash® , Ink Business Unlimited® you can combine the points into Preferred account and transfer into hotel and airline partners

Annual fee is quite low at $95 a year + you get a 10% anniversary bonus on points + $50 hotel credit in Chase travel.

The responses below are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.

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