Experian® is one of the major credit reporting agencies in the United States. It is not a credit-scoring company. It uses a credit scoring model that calculates your credit score based on the information in your Experian credit report. There are two main companies that are widely used for credit scoring: FICO® and VantageScore®. Different credit bureaus may use different credit scoring systems.
Experian creates or compiles your credit report based on information about your credit activity that it receives from lenders where you have active credit accounts: credit card companies, car dealerships, mortgage loan lenders, etc.
Experian uses FICO Score and advises that 90% of lenders also use FICO to determine their creditworthiness. More specifically, FICO Score 8 can give you a fair idea of what your score looks like.
So, what you may think is your Experian score is really your FICO Score. Both FICO and VantageScore scoring models use a range of 300-850 to calculate your credit score. But the individual category ranges are slightly different. Also, both companies periodically release versions of their scoring models. FICO currently has 16 different versions. Some lenders use the latest version and some use an older version. This means that your credit score, even when you check FICO, may differ based on the version of FICO that your lender uses.
If you mean to ask which lenders or companies report to Experian®, you can check with your lender directly. Many lenders often indicate the bureaus they report to on their website, usually, in the FAQs section.
Experian is the largest credit bureau in the United States, but the other two major bureaus – Equifax® and TransUnion® – are equally important. There may be slight differences in the information that each of them collects, but generally, they follow a similar structure.
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