Hard Inquiry (Hard Pull)

A hard inquiry is logged whenever you formally apply for credit and a lender pulls your report to decide. It stays visible on the report for two years, but scoring models only count it for twelve months, and a single inquiry typically costs fewer than five points for someone with an established file.

A soft inquiry is a look that is not an application: checking your own score, a prequalification offer, an existing lender reviewing your account, or an employment screening. Soft pulls are visible only to you and have no effect on your score at all. The practical test is whether you asked for credit or someone simply looked.

Rate shopping is explicitly protected, which is the part most borrowers get wrong. Multiple inquiries for a mortgage, auto loan, or student loan are collapsed into a single inquiry when they fall inside a short window — 45 days for current FICO models, 14 days for VantageScore — so comparing five mortgage lenders costs roughly what comparing one does. Credit card applications get no such treatment; each one counts separately.

Inquiries are the smallest of the scoring factors, worth about 10% of a FICO score alongside other new-credit signals, and they matter far less than payment history or utilization. The larger effect of opening an account is usually indirect: a new account lowers the average age of your credit and adds a fresh balance.

Where inquiries do bite is in the weeks around a mortgage application. Underwriters commonly re-pull credit shortly before closing, and a new car loan or furniture card opened between preapproval and settlement can change the debt-to-income ratio enough to jeopardize the loan.