For those of you looking to stay on top of your credit report, there are a couple new startup companies that may help. Checking your credit report regularly for inaccuracies can help you make sure there are no surprises when you go looking for a loan, new credit card, or even a job.

I’m sure some of you will have privacy concerns over giving a startup all your financial information and social security number (and perhaps rightly so), but for those adventurous ones out there here are some new sites to try out:

Credit Karma

This is a new startup venture that gives you your Transunion credit score anytime you want it. On a scale of 150-950 its not what most people are used to seeing so it may confuse some. FICO reports on a scale of 300-850 so don’t get to exited if you have a higher score than usual.

Credit Karma also offers some statistics on where your credit score falls in the grand scheme of things, from very poor to very good with where your score falls in relation to the average joe. Their business model is to make money on advertising so all of this is free.

Credit.com

This is yet another new startup which gives you a look at your credit report. It doesn’t give you a FICO score or a look at all the information on your report, but rather just an overview of what is on it and an approximation of your score range.

It gives you letter grades in 5 areas - Payment History, Debt Usage, Credit Age, Account Mix, and Inquiries (which are all weighted differently). It also gives you the reason why you received the grade and ways to improve your report. It also has some important summary numbers from your report - credit card debt, total credit limits, total minimum payments, inquiry records, etc. This site also works off advertising as well as upselling other services, so the basic information is free.

Quizzle.com

Quizzle is a new site backed by Quicken loans. It gives you your actual Experian PLUS credit score and credit report. No estimations or summaries, the whole thing.

It also gives you some additional information about your home and mortgage status that I did not find particularly helpful. But if you are looking for a straight look at your report and score this is a good place to check out.

Annual Credit Report

While not a startup, I thought this was worth mentioning. This site allows you to get your government mandated free credit report once a year from all 3 credit reporting agencies (Experian, Transunion, and Equifax). It does not give you your credit score, but gives you everything on your report for free.

Some other sites require you to sign up for a trial service to get your “free” report which if you don’t cancel they will charge you for. This is the official one that everyone should be using once a year that does not make you sign up for anything.

A trick I use is I do not get all 3 reports at once. It allows you to get 1 report per year from each agency, so if you break it up over the course of the year you can check your report every 4 months by using a different agency each time.

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