Soft Inquiry

Banking & Credit

A soft inquiry is a credit check that doesn't affect your score — typically used for pre-qualification, employer background checks, your own credit pulls, and account reviews by existing creditors. Soft inquiries are visible only to you, not to other lenders. Pre-qualification letters from credit card issuers use soft pulls to see if you're likely to be approved before you formally apply (and trigger a hard pull). Tools like Credit Karma and the bureaus' free reports use soft pulls. Use these freely; they're risk-free credit monitoring.