Many readers have asked me about Credit Sesame and whether I’d recommend their service to readers. Meanwhile, I haven’t reviewed a financial product in ages (apologies), so I decided to sign up for their free service about 2 months ago in order to test it out and give you all a Credit Sesame review.
At its core, Credit Sesame is a free credit service that offers a free credit report, free credit monitoring, and even free identity theft insurance.
Is Credit Sesame really free? Is it a scam? Is it safe to use? What are the benefits? I set out to answers these questions and more…
Is Credit Sesame Free?
Yes, the basic Credit Sesame account is free. There are a lot of “gotchas” in the free credit services space, but not with Credit Sesame. During the sign up process, I did not have to provide a credit card or any form of payment.
The basic account offers a free TransUnion credit score, free credit monitoring, and even $50,000 of identity theft insurance for free.
If you decide to opt in to upgrade your account, there are varying levels of service that provide access to all 3 credit bureau scores, credit reports, expanded identity theft insurance, and more – for a monthly fee. However, you are not obligated to provide a credit card to get the basic account for free. For this review, I only have tested the basic free account services.
What is Credit Sesame? And How Can it Benefit Me?
Credit Sesame is a free and expanded credit service company. For the basic Credit Sesame account, the free benefits include:
- free TransUnion VantageScore 3.0 credit score
- free credit monitoring
- $50K in free identity theft insurance
TransUnion is one of the three major credit bureaus (along with Experian and Equifax). The TransUnion score is similar to a FICO score. And TransUnion has collaborated with Experian and Equifax to offer a competitor to FICO, which is called VantageScore. Your experience may vary, but I compared my TransUnion and FICO scores and they were within 1 point of each other (823 TransUnion, 824 FICO).
Credit Sesame Free Identity Theft Insurance
Free credit monitoring is an extremely helpful benefit, as it alerts you to any suspicious behavior, new accounts, credit inquiries, or other red flags.
The $50K in free identity theft insurance is interesting to me and what makes Credit Sesame stand apart from other free credit services, as I haven’t seen any other offer this benefit. Looking into it further, here is what is included in the coverage, per the Credit Sesame site:
With our identity theft protection insurance, you are covered, up to an aggregate limit of $50,000, for certain expenses and legal costs that result from:
- Fraud or Embezzlement
- Theft
- Forgery
- Data Breach
- Stolen Identity Event
as defined in the Identity Fraud Insurance Terms and Conditions.
Free Credit Score and Analysis
In the free account, there is an abundance of free reporting such as ongoing credit score monitoring:
I really liked abundance of helpful information in the “credit score analysis” section:
In it, you can see how you are rated in each of the 5 different rating categories that determine your overall credit score, how much of an impact each category has on your score, and your metrics in each category. Super helpful information for anyone looking to maintain or improve their credit score and history.
One area for improvement for Credit Sesame is that they do not offer free credit reports as part of their free service. However, there is a way to get 3 free credit reports annually elsewhere.
Premium Features:
As mentioned previously, there are other “premium” services, such as access to all 3 credit bureau scores, credit reports from all 3 credit bureaus, black market website monitoring, Social Security Number monitoring, change of address monitoring, expanded identity theft insurance ($1 million), and more – for a monthly fee. Many of these features are similar to what you will see from LifeLock (check out my LifeLock review for more info). These features might come in handy if you have an incident that you are worried about. After resolving, you could go back to the basic account.
Is Credit Sesame Safe and Secure?
Any time you are talking about your credit, there are naturally concerns about if the service is safe to use and your information is secured.
While I truly believe that no institution is 100% bullet-proof from hacks, Credit Sesame is about as close as they come. For starters, they are considered secure by Norton, McAfee, and ETrust, and are BBB accredited (and have a good rating and customer responses on the BBB site).
During the signup process, you are not asked for your full Social Security Number – only the last 4 digits to confirm your identity:
The signup process goes through a series of multiple choice questions to make sure you are who you really say you are. You are asked for the following:
- To choose a login and password
- Your email address
- Your full legal name
- Your address
- Phone number
- Your date of birth
- Whether you own or rent your residence
- If you have lived at your current address for at least 6 months (if not, you must enter previous address so Credit Sesame can pull your credit history – typical of all credit reporting agencies)
- The last 4 digits of your Social Security number
Is Credit Sesame a Scam?
Credit Sesame is not a scam. They are a legit credit service company with all of the appropriate accreditations and safety measures that you could hope for. They make money through offering premium account upgrades to users and through advertising financial products that its members might be interested in (i.e. credit cards and loans).
Credit Sesame is headquartered in Mountain View, CA and has been around since 2010, with a lot of awards and recognition for their service. They have amassed over 6 million member signups for their service and they have received millions in funding from investors – so they are legit and will be around for a while.
Final Thoughts on Credit Sesame
All-in-all, Credit Sesame is a free and useful credit service that I feel really good about adding to my credit monitoring and protection tool set. They are the only one that offers free identity theft insurance that I am aware of. Additionally, their reporting analysis features are excellent.
The only area for improvement to their free service is no access to free credit reports. However, the link I shared earlier details how you can get 3 annually for free elsewhere.
If you’re interested, you can sign up for a free Credit Sesame account here.
Have you used Credit Sesame? What’s your take?
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Note: As a Credit Sesame user, I have asked them if I can be a part of their affiliate program, which means if you sign up for their free service, I may receive a small commission. Credit Sesame did not ask me to review their service or pay me for posting this review.
Nice overview. I used Credit Sesame for a while and it was helpful, but I found that it differed a lot from my official FICO score. Many credit card companies (AMEX, Citi, Discover to name a few) are now offering free official credit scores when you have one of their cards. I guess that’s why Sesame is now offering the free identity theft monitoring. Can’t go wrong either way I guess.
Glad you liked it. Maybe retry on the credit score to compare to FICO. I found it to be within just one point, so maybe TransUnion is modeling differently these days. And within 1 point is pretty good for free!
I used to use both CreditKarma and Credit Sesame, but I dropped off Sesame because I didn’t like the platform. Since Credit Karma changed their layout and have more marketing than they used to, I logged in to Sesame today, and found I prefer their setup now. They show all my debt and some scores in one place!
Yeah – I really like the informative components on Credit Sesame’s site on how your credit score is determined and how it can be improved.
It sucks. They say your odds are good or very good and none of their subscribers actually approved me. If cost me alot of inquiries and lowered my credit scores. Complete waste of time. Stick with Credit Karmw
I agree. I tried signing up for Credit Sesame and it said, I had these offers but when we did the pre-check, I was flatly denied on the spot. What’s with that? Sorry Credit Sesame, I’m sticking with Credit Karma.
It is not true that they do not ask for your full SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER. They asked me and I was appalled. I will never give out my SSN to a new company that I have never done business with before. And this is a credit monitoring company. They must be nuts. I am just fine using Credit Karma who never asked for my FULL SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER and they provide great service.
I is Credit Karma for 6 months, and I recently signed up for Credit Sesame. I am NOT liking Credit Sesame. The are really, really heavy on the marketing. I get at least 2 emails a day from them. Today I got a rather deceptive one: it said my credit usage rating changed to an F and the message included a link to apply for another credit card, apparently to ‘balance’ my usage. When I checked with both credit sesame and credit karma, my credit usage was actually fine. I’m probably going to disable my Credit Sesame because they are so very heavily marketing, where as Credit Karma is still marketing, they are not doing it daily or deceptively. thanks