Hard vs Soft Inquiries: What Actually Dings Your Score

An inquiry is a record that someone pulled your credit report. There are two kinds and they are not remotely equal: soft inquiries do nothing to your score; hard inquiries cost a few points. Confusing them keeps a lot of people from checking their own credit - which is backwards.

Soft inquiries: zero impact, always

Soft pulls happen when you check your own credit, when a card app shows you a score, when an employer screens you (with permission), when insurers or lenders pre-screen you for offers, and when existing creditors review your account. You can have a thousand soft pulls and your score doesn't move one point. Check your own reports as often as you want.

Hard inquiries: small, temporary, real

A hard pull happens when you apply for credit - a card, loan, mortgage, apartment (sometimes), or a credit limit increase at some issuers. Each one typically costs under 5-10 points, fades in impact within a few months, and stops counting in scoring after one year (it stays visible on the report for two).

What makes hard pulls dangerous isn't one - it's a cluster. Six applications in three months reads as distress to the model.

The rate-shopping window

FICO knows you're supposed to shop for a mortgage or auto loan. Its newer models treat all mortgage, auto, and student loan inquiries within a 45-day window as a single inquiry for scoring (older versions use 14 days). VantageScore uses a 14-day rolling window. So: do your loan shopping in a tight two-week burst and it costs you one pull.

Important: this grace applies to installment loan shopping, not credit cards. Five card applications are five hard pulls.

Apartments and utilities

Tenant screening can be hard or soft depending on the service - ask before you authorize. Utility and phone account setups sometimes hard-pull too. If you're about to apply for a mortgage, tell every party involved not to pull anything without warning you first.

Disputing bogus hard inquiries

A hard inquiry you don't recognize can mean fraud or a clerical error. You can't dispute a legitimate inquiry just because you regret applying, but unauthorized ones are disputable: contact the company that pulled it, and dispute with the bureau showing it. Identity-theft pulls also belong in an identity theft report at IdentityTheft.gov.

My rule

One hard pull per goal, batched. I check my own reports monthly (free at AnnualCreditReport.com - soft, always), prequalify with soft pulls where available, and only formally apply when the prequalified offer is the one I want. Since I started treating applications as scarce, the inquiry factor stopped being a topic.

Quick answers

How long do hard inquiries stay on my report?

Two years visible, one year of scoring impact in FICO models.

Does getting denied hurt more?

No - the inquiry is the only scoring event. Approval or denial doesn't change the inquiry's effect. But the denial letter tells you why, which is useful intel.