The Fine Print Canada · PUBLISHED 16 JUL 2026 · VERIFIED 16 JUL 2026 · CA EDITION

Why Checking Your Credit Score Won't Hurt It — 5 Myths Costing You

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Canadian consumers can check their own credit report or score for free through the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, and it won’t affect their credit score at all.

The number that matters

A Canadian credit score ranges from 300 to 900, and the Government of Canada says checking your own credit report or score does not affect that score.

How it quietly costs you

The first costly myth is the fear that a self-check is a “credit hit,” which keeps people from monitoring errors, fraud, or stale information that can drag down borrowing outcomes later. The mechanism is simple: a soft inquiry from checking your own report is not treated like a lender’s hard inquiry, so it does not lower your score.

The quantified cost is not a fee for checking itself, but the avoided damage: FCAC says you can order your report and score from Canada’s two main bureaus, and checking them won’t hurt your rating, while hard inquiries are tied to credit applications and can affect your score. In practical terms, the “old” behavior is not checking at all; the better behavior is checking regularly at zero score cost.

The second, compounding trap

A second layer of loss is letting credit-report errors or identity theft go unnoticed, which can then affect access to credit and pricing when you actually apply. Equifax says checking your report can help ensure information is accurate and can help detect signs of potential identity theft.

The long-run cost is concrete because credit quality affects loan approval and interest-rate terms in Canada: TD says a strong score can open the door to lower interest rates, while lower scores can limit approvals or worsen terms. Since Canadian scores range from 300 to 900, even a small score problem can push a borrower from “good” toward a weaker band before a mortgage or car-loan application.

What this looks like in practice

Maya, 34, is a marketing coordinator in Toronto earning $68K a year, with one credit card, a $6,500 balance, and a TransUnion score she has not checked in a year; she wants a mortgage in about 8 years.

• She learns that checking her own score through FCAC or a bank app is 0 points to her score, because self-checks are soft inquiries, not hard inquiries.
• She discovers that a “good” Canadian score is typically 660+, so if her score is sitting at 640, she is below the common acceptable range lenders use.
• She sees that using more than about 30% of available credit is commonly flagged as a bad pattern, while staying below that level is the better benchmark, so her $6,500 balance may be hurting her utilization depending on her limit.

The full cost of doing nothing

For Maya, the combined cost of Problems 1 and 2 is the potential lifetime borrowing penalty from not checking her own file and not fixing issues early, rather than any direct fee for checking. The modelling basis is conservative: regular self-monitoring costs $0, while the avoided downside is preserving access to a 660+-type score band and preventing adverse interest terms that can persist across future credit applications.

What to do about it

• Check your own credit report and score through the FCAC “Getting your credit report and credit score” page or the bureaus’ consumer portals, where the key figure is whether the report shows errors or a lower-than-expected score.

• Go to the official consumer report/score access path.

• Open your Equifax and TransUnion files.

• Compare personal details, accounts, balances, and inquiries.

• Good looks like no unexpected accounts, no unknown inquiries, and a score in or above the 660+ range.

• Compare the same information across Equifax and TransUnion, because Canada has two main credit bureaus and the files may not match exactly.

• Pull both bureau files.

• Match account balances, payment history, and personal data.

• Flag any mismatch for dispute.

• Good looks like consistent files with no errors and no surprise hard inquiries.

• Dispute any wrong item immediately through the bureau and keep proof of the correction request.

• Identify the error.

• Submit the bureau’s dispute process.

• Save screenshots or confirmation numbers.

• Good looks like corrected information and a score that reflects the true file, not the error.

A myth worth clearing up

Myth: Checking your own credit score hurts it. Fact: Checking your own credit report or score does not affect your score because it is a soft inquiry.

Sources

• FCAC
• FCAC

Researched 2026-07-16.

Corrections & disclosure: an AI-assisted, human-reviewed guide. Every figure is dated and sourced above. Spot something out of date or wrong? Tell us and we’ll correct it — corrections are noted here and in the video description.