How Many Hard Inquiries Is Too Many?

What Is a Hard Inquiry?

A hard inquiry is a record of when someone checked your credit report before making a lending decision. These are sometimes called hard pulls because companies request and “pull” your credit report from one or more of the credit bureaus—Experian, TransUnion and Equifax.

However, the credit bureaus only provide credit reports to companies that have a legally defined permissible purpose to review your credit report, such as in response to a credit application.

Here are a few quick facts about credit inquiries:

• They generally happen after you apply for credit. Hard inquiries may occur when you apply for a new credit account and the creditor checks your credit report. Hard inquiries can affect your scores even if the creditor denies your application.
• They only get added to the report that’s checked. If a creditor checks your Experian credit report, a hard inquiry will be added to your Experian credit file. But you won’t have new hard inquiries on your other two credit reports.
• They’re a minor scoring factor. A hard inquiry might hurt your credit score, but it generally has a small impact and many people’s scores recover within a few months.
• Some hard inquiries won’t hurt your scores. Credit scoring models consider rate shopping—applying for several of the same type of loan to find the best interest rate—positive credit behavior, so your credit score won’t take multiple hits if you apply within a short window. Instead, several inquiries will be grouped into one, reducing any damage. (More on this below.)
• Others will see them. People and companies that review your credit report can see all the hard inquiries in your credit file.
• They aren’t permanent. The credit bureaus remove hard inquiries from your credit reports after two years.

Credit checks that happen for non-lending purposes, such as when you check your own credit report, also get recorded in your credit file. However, they’re recorded as soft credit inquiries.

Soft inquiries don’t affect your credit scores. You can see them when you check your own credit report, but soft inquiries generally don’t appear in the credit reports that lenders receive.

Learn more >> Hard vs. Soft Inquiry: What’s the Difference?

How Do Hard Inquiries Impact Your Credit Score?

Hard inquiries can have no impact on your credit score or a relatively small negative impact, such as a score drop of 10 points or less. The exact impact can depend on the entirety of your credit report—a hard inquiry isn’t worth a certain number of points.

The impact can also depend on the type of credit score and its scoring rules.

FICO Scores and Hard Inquiries

FICO has a few rules that affect how hard inquiries might impact your scores:

• Considers hard inquiries from the past 12 months: FICO Scores only consider hard inquiries from the previous 12 months, even though the inquiries can remain in your credit report for two years.
• Applies a 30-day buffer: FICO Scores don’t consider hard inquiries from student, auto or home loan applications that occurred during the previous 30 days.
• Deduplicates specific hard inquiries: FICO Scores count multiple hard inquiries from the same type of application as a single inquiry when creating your scores. However, this “deduplication” only applies to hard inquiries from student, auto and mortgage loans that occur within a 45-day window. Older FICO Scores use a shorter 14-day dedupe period.

VantageScore Scores and Hard Inquiries

VantageScore^® takes a slightly different approach to hard inquiries:

• Counts inquiries from the previous 24 months: VantageScore credit scores can consider hard inquiries for the full two years that they’re in your credit report. However, hard inquiries still generally have a minor impact on your score that fades over the first few months.
• Deduplicates most hard inquiries: VantageScore credit scores deduplicate most hard inquiries that occur within a 14-day window, even if the hard inquiries are from different types of credit applications.

Learn more >> How Does Rate Shopping Affect Your Credit Scores?

How Many Hard Inquiries Is Too Many?

There’s no strict amount of hard inquiries that’s too few or too many, especially considering the credit scoring models’ rules for rate shopping.

For example, if you’re buying a new car, you might apply for auto loans from your bank and with online lenders. You might also work with a dealer’s financing department, which could submit your application to dozens of lenders.

Each of these applications can lead to a new hard inquiry. But if all the lenders checked your credit within a 14-day period, FICO and VantageScore scoring models will treat all the hard inquiries as a single hard inquiry. Submitting more applications might help you find a loan with a better interest rate or term—and there’s no downside in terms of credit scoring.

However, you still may want to be cautious when applying for credit. A new hard inquiry can hurt your credit scores even if you don’t get approved. Additionally, FICO Scores don’t deduplicate hard inquiries from applications that aren’t for student, auto or mortgage loans—so applying for multiple credit cards at once, for instance, is best avoided.

How to Avoid Too Many Hard Inquiries

You can avoid having too many hard inquiries that hurt your credit scores by understanding how credit scores treat hard inquiries and strategically applying for credit.

• Rate shop during a 14-day period. Try to group your applications when you’re shopping for a new auto, home or private student loan (federal student loan applications don’t lead to hard inquiries). Keeping the applications and resulting hard inquiries in a 14-day period could limit the impact on all your credit scores.
• Get preapproved for personal loans and credit cards. FICO Scores don’t deduplicate hard inquiries for personal loans and cards. However, some lenders and card issuers offer preapprovals, which can tell you if you’ll likely get approved with a soft credit check—the type that doesn’t affect your credit scores.

Also, don’t overthink the occasional hard inquiry. Building good credit is only helpful if you use it, and you shouldn’t be afraid to apply for a new credit card with great benefits or take out an important loan.

Additionally, you can focus on the other, more important scoring factors. For example, paying your bills on time and decreasing your credit utilization ratio by paying down credit card balances could help your credit scores more than sporadic hard inquiries hurt them.

How to Remove Inaccurate Inquiries From Your Credit Report

A hard inquiry is a record of when someone checked your credit report. You can’t dispute or remove legitimate hard inquiries. However, if you check your credit report and notice hard inquiries that don’t align with credit applications that you submitted, you may want to investigate.

Sometimes, when a company checks your credit, the hard inquiry lists the company’s name using an abbreviation or a name you’re not familiar with, such as a parent company’s name. You might not recognize the company, but it’s not necessarily an error.

Alternatively, the hard inquiry might be the result of an identity thief applying for credit in your name. If the hard inquiry is the result of fraud, you have the right to dispute the inquiry and related fraudulent information.

You can dispute most inaccurate information on your Experian credit report online. However, you’ll need to contact Experian by phone or mail if you want to dispute inaccurate hard inquiries.

Learn more >> How to Remove Hard Inquiries From Credit Report

Monitor Your Credit for New Inquiries

You can check your Experian credit report for free and get complimentary credit report monitoring with real-time alerts, including notifications when there’s a new hard inquiry in your credit report. You’ll also get your FICO Score for free, so you can track how new actions affect your score. And if you’re looking for a new credit card or loan, you can get matched with offers based on your credit profile without a hard inquiry.