What Actually Makes Up Your Credit Score
The five scoring factors, roughly how much each one weighs, and which of them you can realistically change this month.
There is no single credit score. There are dozens of scoring models, and the one a mortgage lender pulls is not the one your banking app shows you. But almost all of them weigh the same five things in roughly the same order, so the general picture holds.
Knowing what moves your score tells you where to start if you want to repair your credit yourself.
Payment history — about 35%
Whether you paid on time. This is the largest single factor in nearly every model, and it is the one with the longest memory. A payment reported 30 days late stays on your report for seven years from the date of the missed payment, though its effect on your score fades over time.
A payment that is a few days late but never reported to a bureau does not show up here at all. Most creditors do not report a late payment until it is at least 30 days past due.
Amounts owed — about 30%
Mostly this means credit utilization: your revolving balances divided by your revolving limits. It is calculated both per-card and across all your cards.
This is the factor that moves fastest. Utilization is generally recalculated when your card issuer reports your balance each month, so a change here can show up on the next report rather than in a year.
Length of credit history — about 15%
The age of your oldest account, the age of your newest, and the average across all of them. This is why closing an old card you no longer use can be counterproductive — though closed accounts in good standing usually remain on your report for around ten years.
Credit mix — about 10%
Whether you have both revolving accounts (cards) and installment accounts (auto loans, mortgages, student loans). It is a small factor, and it is not worth taking on a loan you do not need in order to improve it.
New credit — about 10%
Recent hard inquiries and recently opened accounts. Several applications in a short window can look like distress. Rate shopping for a single mortgage or auto loan is usually treated as one inquiry if the applications fall inside a short window, which varies by model.
What this means in practice
Ranked by how quickly you can affect them:
- Utilization. Paying a balance down before the statement closes can change the number reported. Fast.
- New applications. Simply not applying for anything for a few months. Fast, and free.
- Errors on your report. If something is genuinely wrong, correcting it changes the inputs. Timeline depends on the investigation.
- Payment history going forward. Every on-time payment from here is a data point. Slow but permanent.
- Age of accounts. Only time does this one.
The part nobody likes
Accurate negative information is designed to stay. The scoring system exists to describe risk to a lender, and a real missed payment is real information. The leverage you have is in the two places where the system is genuinely fallible: information that is wrong, and behavior going forward.