In-depth credit score analysis
Helps you work toward a financial goal
Limited alerts
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Identity theft protection services have a variety of price points, features, and services, so choosing the one right for you may feel exhausting. If you have a goal of making a large purchase like a home, boat, car, or even your first rental property, having your credit in good standing is a must.
The myFICO service is dedicated to just that, with a focus on credit based on need. It will give you the tools to plan out your purchase and keep an eye on your credit, all while providing identity theft insurance and remediation services in case something bad happens. But is this service only good for large purchase planning or are other identity protection services also covered?
| Price | $19.95–$39.95/mo |
| Identity theft insurance | Up to $1 million |
| Credit monitoring | Yes |
| Credit reports | Yes — Experian, Equifax, TransUnion |
| Credit score | Yes |
| Identity recovery | Yes |
| Dark web alerts | No |
| Social media account alerts | No |
| Details | Get myFICO |
The myFICO plans are not comprehensive identity theft prevention services focused on monitoring all your accounts. Rather, the ID theft protection and credit monitoring guide is intended to help you take a deep dive into your credit history and make moves to reach your goals. Whether you want to purchase a home, get a new car, or take out a loan, myFICO will help you identify what those lenders are looking for and understand how the scores from the credit bureaus affect your goal planning.
Pricing for myFICO’s plans does seem a little steep, considering you can manage these services independently for free or for significantly less. The value really depends on if you’re well versed in the nuances of credit to be able to navigate those waters alone or if you’d rather work with a service. People with specific purchasing goals may find this service useful for helping them streamline their credit efforts. People looking for ways to protect their identity will likely be left wanting if they choose myFICO for that purpose.
myFICO is less a protection tool than it is a credit-building tool. While that’s the main focus, there are some protections built into the product that directly relate to your credit score and keep you in good standing with the reporting bureaus. The protection services offered include identity theft insurance, 24/7 identity restoration services, and lost wallet protection.
If you are a victim of identity theft, myFICO helps you restore your good name with up to $1 million in financial support and with its own remediation experts. If you lose your wallet, the service will assist you in canceling and reacquiring all of your cards and documents in your wallet.
While this doesn’t cover a lot of the categories other ID theft protection services cover — like dark web scanning, home title monitoring, address change alerts, and social media alerts — it can help in identity theft situations, all while aligning your credit goals.
There really aren’t a ton of features included with the myFICO service. All myFICO plans include credit monitoring as well as credit reports. There’s also a FICO score simulator that comes with all subscriptions. For example, you’ll see how much your score will change if you ignore a bill or pay off a credit card. While it’s fun to look at for a little bit, you won’t have to put a lot of effort into using this service.
If you’ve purchased the Advanced or Premier plan, you also receive identity monitoring and alerts.
Depending on the plan you choose, you’ll have access to either one or all three credit reporting bureaus and either monthly or quarterly updates. We chose the Advanced plan so we were able to see all three bureaus, but that meant we would only receive updates quarterly or every three months.
You don’t have to interact much with the credit monitoring features. myFICO will monitor your scores and alert you if something needs your attention. This will likely generate alerts if you’re making financial decisions like applying for a home loan, auto loan, or credit card to determine your creditworthiness.
If you have a financial goal in mind, like purchasing a new house or taking out a loan, it’s important to keep an eye on your credit score. Even if you aren’t working toward a goal, a good credit score can help you in situations that may come up unexpectedly, like needing a new credit card or a small personal loan to handle major car repairs.
myFICO’s credit reporting feature allows you to read your credit report with all the line items listed, what standing they’re in with each bureau, and what each line item means in regard to your overall score. One thing we wish was included in the report was advice on how to fix negative reports, but you can find resources to dispute an item in the drop-down menu under your name.
The identity monitoring service through myFICO isn’t very robust, but that should be expected given the focus of the product seems to be more on credit building and monitoring. Still, if you purchase an Advanced or Premier plan, you’ll receive ID monitoring.
There isn’t much to this feature other than inputting your Social Security number (SSN), medical ID number (from your insurance), bank accounts, driver’s license, and passport and then waiting to see if there’s an alert. Unlike other services we’ve used, there weren’t any alerts when we first logged in, and there weren’t any after several hours. With other services, we’ve received alerts letting us know all the addresses associated with our SSN or financial accounts in our name. Considering myFICO is scanning for fishy business, you’ll likely not receive frequent alerts either. This is great because it makes you less likely to be a victim of identity theft losses.
The most valuable part of identity theft protection services is the restoration service included in the product. Restoration services are one of those things you may never use, but if you need to, then identity theft prevention is absolutely worth it. myFICO states its remediation specialists are available 24/7, and there are dedicated spaces in your portal for learning more about the restoration services.
We didn’t have an issue purchasing and setting up myFICO. In fact, the entire process took less than five minutes. After purchasing, we input our data, including our SSN, and then let the service activate. Since there isn’t much to the dashboard, we looked around and checked our credit report, read through some of the educational materials included, and looked at our credit scores from the three reporting bureaus.
After 24 hours, we still didn’t have any alerts, which we admit is a good thing. The entire experience of exploring the portal and what we had to use didn’t take more than an hour or so, even after looking through reports and some of the educational materials.
This isn’t a service you need to interact with daily, so it’s ok that there isn’t a lot to do. If there were more features, like dark web alerts or registered offender monitoring, we think we would have spent more time in the portal.
Overall, the service is solid and from a trusted name, and you can feel secure knowing that it has an eye on your credit.
There is actually an entire section in the privacy policy stating how your data is kept safe. One of the highlights of the protection process includes keeping secure areas of the buildings where data is housed. myFICO also provides passwords, encryption, and safeguard protocols, including authentication procedures for customers.
While exploring the privacy policy, we didn’t see any red flags about data sharing. myFICO outlines how data is only shared to deliver the services you’ve requested or in order to comply with any legal requirements. There is also a section outlining your rights and another section on how to exercise your rights. Overall, this is a privacy policy we’re comfortable with for a security product.
Below is a section from myFICO’s privacy policy on “How we protect your personal data.”
“FICO uses reasonable safeguards to protect your personal data, including physical safeguards, such as secure areas in buildings; electronic and technological safeguards, such as passwords and encryption; and procedural safeguards, such as customer authentication procedures designed to help prevent ID theft. We restrict access to your personal data to only those employees who need to know that information to provide products, services, or other content to you.
Some of our websites permit you to create an account. When you do so, you will be prompted to create a password. You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your password, and you are responsible for any access to or use of your account by someone else that has obtained your password, whether or not such access or use has been authorized by you. You should notify us of any unauthorized use of your password or account.
While we use reasonable efforts to protect your personal data from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure, no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is fully secure, and we cannot guarantee the security of your personal data. In the event we are required to inform you of a breach to your personal data we may notify you electronically, in writing, or by telephone, if permitted to do so by law.”
If you want to take myFICO on the go with you, there are mobile apps in the Apple App and Google Play stores. The iOS app has a 4.8-star rating in the app store. This is a lot higher than many of the apps we’ve seen for identity theft protection services. The Android version in the Google Play store also has a high 4.4-star rating, with many customers seemingly pleased with the app and the service. The iPad app is rated 3.0 stars.
If you want to access myFICO from your computer, there aren’t any desktop apps for macOS or Windows, but you can log in to the service via another browser. So far, we haven’t found a major browser that didn’t support logging into the service.
We reached out to customer support to ask a question about pricing and trials. The only options available to us were to call or fill out a form and wait for an email back. We opted to fill out the form on the site and wait for an email.
The response was within the 24-hour window myFICO promised and was curt and succinct. While we wouldn’t claim it was outright rude, it also wasn’t helpful or friendly. There are no free trials offered, and we were redirected (without links) to the pricing page. So while we did receive an answer in a timely fashion, it wasn’t our favorite experience.
The tiers for myFICO have very little difference between them. The Basic plan offers monthly updates of your Experian credit score while also providing you with identity theft insurance and lost wallet services. If you move up to the Advanced plan you’ll receive all three reporting bureaus, but it will only populate an update every three months. Identity monitoring is included in the Advanced and Premier plans. The Premier plan offers all three bureaus reports every month but at a price tag of $39.95/mo.
Which plan you choose is going to be based on your personal goals. Honestly, it really isn’t necessary for most people to check their credit score every month. There are services like Credit Karma and MoneyLion that offer free credit monitoring. But luckily, this is a month-to-month service, so you have the option to cancel or change plans if it’s not working for you. We do think pricing for myFICO is a little high, although it’s not higher than some competitors, as many of them also have price points around this range.
| Plan | Basic | Advanced | Premier |
| Price per month | $19.95/mo | $29.95/mo | $39.95/mo |
| Who’s covered | 1 adult | 1 adult | 1 adult |
| Identity theft insurance | Up to $1 million | Up to $1 million | Up to $1 million |
| Credit monitoring | |||
| Financial activity alerts | |||
| Credit reports | Yes — Experian | Yes — Experian, Equifax, TransUnion | Yes — Experian, Equifax, TransUnion |
| Credit report frequency | Monthly | Quarterly | Monthly |
| Credit score | |||
| FICO score | |||
| Identity recovery | |||
| Details | View Plan | View Plan | View Plan |
If you have goals that align with myFICO’s offerings, then yes, it’s worth it. The service helps you pinpoint your financial goals and work toward them while also providing some identity protection. If your main goal is identity theft prevention through monitoring the dark web and a variety of accounts, then you may want to check out another product like IDShield or PrivacyGuard.
FICO is a credit score calculated by the Fair Isaac Corporation (FICO). There are a variety of different models FICO uses to determine your credit, and some are even industry-specific. Lenders most often use FICO as well as VantageScore to determine eligibility for loans.
No, myFICO is a paid service for both monthly monitoring and one-time reports. If you would like a free copy of your credit report, you can visit Annual Credit Report or Experian.
Both services provide a deeper understanding of your credit history and Social Security number monitoring. Experian goes much further than myFICO with more identity monitoring features and the ability to add family members to a plan. Protecting children from identity theft should be a high priority, so this feature feels necessary. It even has a free plan that provides you with your FICO score, dark web scans, and personal privacy scans.
Yes, myFICO is good for financial planning. This is a service for people who are working toward specific financial goals and want information on how they look to lenders. However, if your goal is for robust identity theft protection and prevention, this might not be the best service.
Other services like Experian Identity Works and Identity Guard offer more in the areas of prevention as well as insurance and remediation services. These services aren’t as great at helping you work toward specific financial goals, so that might be a downside if that’s a priority for you. If it’s something you can live without, then you might want to consider a different service than myFICO.
While the quality of service you’ll receive with myFICO is high, you’ll also be paying for that with a hefty monthly price tag. There are other ways to achieve your financial goals without having to pay through the nose.
In-depth credit score analysis
Helps you work toward a financial goal
Limited alerts
