The best credit monitoring tools are essential tools that can help you identify identity theft and other types of fraud instantly.
Without credit monitoring, you can be the victim of fraud or other problems with your credit report and lack of experience for months or even years, which can seriously affect your life. While some tracking services come with credit cards, others offer free credit cards for a monthly fee Basic services you never have to pay. Remember that the extent of services you receive is largely proportional to the monthly premium you commit to.
While free credit monitoring services offer a basic set of benefits, paid credit monitoring services from companies like Identity Force and LifeLock take additional steps to protect your identity and creditworthiness and even offer additional perks like Dark Monitoring Web and Identity Theft Insurance.
Before choosing a credit monitoring service, it’s helpful to know what features the top companies offer and how much they charge. In the meantime, you should compare credit monitoring companies on the quality of their offerings, their overall success rate, and user ratings. To help you with your research, we’ve compared over 20 free and paid credit monitoring services available today.
What to Consider When Choosing a Credit Monitoring Tools
Choosing credit monitoring service can make all the difference in your life and credit score, but that doesn’t mean there is a better service for everyone. In reality, different services may work better for different people based on their needs, credit habits, family size, and more. Here’s everything you should keep in mind when comparing credit monitoring services that our reviews have done:
Cost: While many credit monitoring services have tricked our liar into offering a free trial, keep in mind that the benefits they offer are limited. You can also pay for credit monitoring services for broader coverage. However, compare prices to pay only for the services you need most. If you choose to pay for this type of help, expect a monthly payment between $9 and $40.
Normal Loan Usage: If you don’t book many loan delays per month, it is possible to get a free Credit Monitoring service all you need. However, if you have a wide variety of open credit lines and lots to monitor, it may be better to have a more robust credit monitoring service plan, credit monitoring tools to help you control spending
Identity theft protection: The more you have to lose, the more important identity theft protection becomes. Some of the more comprehensive credit monitoring services offer refunds of up to $1 million for stolen funds, which can be worth it if you have a high net worth.
Discover the best credit monitoring tools companies
- Credit Sesame
Credit Sesame is known for their free credit monitoring service and it’s easy to see why. Once you sign up and create an account, you can view your credit history for free. You also get access to free credit and identity theft monitoring, as well as a variety of tools that can help you figure out how to improve your credit score over time.
Once you’ve decided on a plan, Credit Sesame also offers world-class credit monitoring services at three different levels – Advanced Credit, Professional Credit and Platinum Protection. A credit monitoring tools to help you control spending.
While all three paid services include credit rating updates from all three credit bureaus, you can pay more for perks like 24/7 phone access to credit repair specialists, dark web monitoring and monitoring of public records.
Credit Sesame’s top coverage ratio is also at $19.95 per month, which is good value considering all benefits included.
- PrivacyGuard
Privacy Guard is another credit monitoring company to consider if you are concerned about the theft of your identity and financial information. This company offers three plans – Identity Theft Protection for $9.99 per month, Credit Protection for $19.99 per month, or a combination of both plans for $24.99 per month.
Its superior plan – which includes all the services it offers such as credit monitoring from all three agencies, credit and debit card monitoring, public record monitoring, dark web monitoring and $1M in identity theft insurance .
You also get some unusual perks like neighborhood reporting, tools to track down registered criminals, and emergency travel assistance.
- lifelock
LifeLock is one of the most famous in the credit surveillance niche, but its notoriety is well deserved. This company offers several credit monitoring plans to suit all budgets and family sizes, and they also include online software designed to keep you safe when you use the Internet for shopping, banking and more.
LifeLock offers three Plans, all including Norton 360 software for increased computer security online. Select coverage starts at $8.99 per month, Advantage membership costs $17.99 per month, and Ultimate Plus coverage costs $25.99 per month. These prices are good for the first year.
- Credit Karma
Credit Karma offers a list of very simple benefits, without additional insurance or extensive monitoring, but the services it offers are completely free. After signing up for an account, you can check your credit history for free at any time. You will also be notified of any changes to your credit score or reports, including any accounts opened in your name.
Credit Karma also provides valuable tools to help you determine what factors can affect your credit score and steps to improve it.
- Identity Force
IdentityForce offers two different plans that can help protect your assets and identity – an UltraSecure plan for $17.95 a month and an UltraSecure+ Loan plan for $23.95 a month. Both plans include perks like fraud monitoring, court records monitoring, medical identity fraud protection, and dark web monitoring.
The biggest difference is that the more expensive plan also includes credit monitoring by all three credit bureaus – Experian, Equifax and TransUnion.
It is also important to note that IdentityForce plans include £1M identity theft insurance.
Other options the credit monitoring tools
- MyFico
If your primary purpose is credit monitoring, you may want to pay for credit monitoring straight from the source. MyFICO.com offers three different credit monitoring plans, each of which offers greater insurance coverage for a higher monthly premium. For example, their basic plan is only $19.95 a month and includes office coverage (Experian), credit monitoring and $1 million in identity theft protection, among other things.
You can also pay $29.95 a month for three offices and updates every three months, or $39.95 a month for three offices with updates every month, which includes identity monitoring, so you have to pay more for get that vital coverage.
The basic plan also only monitors your Experian credit report, which can leave you vulnerable if the first signs of fraud in your account show up on your TransUnion or Equifax credit reports.
Conclusion
Choosing the best credit monitoring services is not an easy task, mainly because there are many companies that offer credit monitoring and identity theft assistance.
While free services do not offer the most comprehensive credit monitoring available today, we prefer companies that offer free basic membership or free evaluation. We understand that paid credit monitoring may be overkill for some people who only need basic information about their credit reports each month. We also know that some consumers prefer to try the services for free before committing to paying a monthly premium.
