Before applying for any credit card, you should really know what your FICO score is and what the minimum FICO score people will be approved for is. Otherwise you’ll be denied for the card and you will have wasted a hard credit pull (which will cause your score to drop by about five points). In this post we will show you how to find this data.
1. Search On Forums
One of the easiest way to find application data is to do a search on one of the many credit forums and see what other people have reported. The downside to this is that the data is not organized in anyway and can often be incredibly out dated. The upside is that people generally give more information (such as their income and any negative items such as late payments or bankruptcies they have on file). I’d suggest searching the following forums:
If you know of another forum that should be added, let us know in the comments.
2. Look On Credit Karma
Credit Karma will show you the average credit score that was approved for the card, along with the lowest credit score ever approved for the card. This is based off the credit score they use (VantageScore V3 or TransRisk score). The biggest downside with Credit Karma is that most of their users won’t call the reconsideration line and they don’t use the FICO score (and lots of peoples FICO and Credit Karma scores are vastly different for a variety of reasons). You also don’t get to see why somebody was denied for the card or individual data points – you only see averages. Yet another downside is that it doesn’t give you any data on which credit bureau is pulled.
Another downside is that they don’t have all credit cards, they only have credit cards which they receive an affiliate commission for. This means you won’t always be able to find the data you’re looking for.
The upside is that it’s easy to view the compiled information quickly.
3. Look On WhoGaveMeCredit.com
This site allows you to search by card name, state and even score. It has a lot of data and will show you a persons credit score for all three credit bureaus, it also allows individuals to leave notes, income and the credit limit they received.
The major downside of this site is that it’s a bit cumbersome to navigate and often there are multiple entries for the same card (e.g Chase Sapphire Prefered & Chase Sapphire Preferred) it does have a good amount of data though which is handy.
4. Look On CreditBoards Credit Pull Database
Credit Boards has the most complete listing of credit pull information on the web. You can find data and lots of it for almost all credit cards, the downside is that it’s a little bit difficult to navigate and some data is not complete. They also don’t list income for applicants which is becoming more and more important.
Once you know about it, it’s easily the best resource when it comes to this type of data.
5. Look On Credit Collab
Credit Collab is a fairly new site that works similarly to WhoGaveMeCredit.com and Credit Boards. It allows you to select a card and then see all the application data for it: income, credit score, acceptance (with or without reconsideration) & date.
The major downsides are as follows: no way to add notes, no way to see which credit bureau was pulled and no way to specify what type of credit score was posted. There is also not that much application data currently available.
6. Look On Our Site
Whenever we do a full review of a card, we always collate all of this information and tidy it up for you so you can see quickly and easily what score is needed. We also give you our guidelines on what the minimum score you should have before applying and what score we recommend before applying. We don’t currently have this information up for all cards, but we’re trying to add one new card per week (starting with the most popular cards).
This is in addition to all the fantastic information that goes into our reviews regularly. Here are two finished samples:
