Credit Karma provides you access to your credit score for free. You don’t have to use their credit card or other services to access their free credit score services. The scores you see on Credit Karma are from the scoring model VantageScore version 3.0. This score is calculated based on information from two of the three major credit bureaus – Equifax® and TransUnion®.
However, Credit Karma is a third-party website that provides credit scores only for educational purposes. It is neither a credit scoring company nor a credit bureau itself. Though Credit Karma scores may be accurate to the VantageScore you may see reflected in your bank statements, lenders do not pull your credit scores from Credit Karma. Also, credit scores help you understand how likely you are to get approvals for loans and/or credit cards, but there are no guarantees, even if you have good or excellent credit.
If you want to know whether VantageScore is more accurate than FICO®, there is no answer to that question. Both scoring models are based on different algorithms and score different factors differently. VantageScore is more recent and was developed in collaboration with all three major credit bureaus. To understand which one is more important, you need to find out which score and which version of the score your lender uses. Then you can focus on factors that affect your credit score based on that model (FICO or VantageScore usually) and work to improve your credit score. If you find differences between your credit score and the score reflected on Credit Karma, it is likely that your lender may be using a different version of the same scoring model or a different scoring model altogether, like FICO which is more widely used.
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