What is a proprietary credit score?

A proprietary credit score is when a credit scoring company or agency has its own individual scoring algorithm to calculate your credit scores based on the information in your credit report(s). The two major credit scoring companies are VantageScore® and FICO®. Both of these companies calculate your credit score based on five factors: payment history, credit utilization rate, credit mix, new credit, and length of credit history. But, the importance of each factor and how much it influences the score varies. FICO also calculates industry-specific credit scores for credit card companies and auto loan lenders.

Equifax® and Experian® also have their own scoring models, but those are for business credit scores and not personal credit scores.

Basically, a proprietary credit score means the way an individual or business credit score is calculated is solely owned by the company and cannot be replicated by others. Credit scoring companies may follow similar guidelines, but they make a few changes to the way they calculate scores.