Often times when people are trying to fix their credit report, they pull up their report a few times and wonder, do these types of credit inquiries hurt my credit score? Here I’ll try to answer that question and thus clear up some misconceptions. You see, there are two kinds of credit inquiries, there is a soft credit inquiry and a hard credit inquiry. One impacts your score negatively while the other one doesn’t.

A soft credit check is when you check your own report or when someone accesses your report without you initiating the look up. Examples of this include when your employer does it, utility company does it or insurance company does it.

A hard credit inquiry happens when you’re applying for credit. Examples of this include when you’re applying for an auto loan, applying for a mortgage or applying for a credit card.