Bankrate

• Free membership
• Website and Mobile App
• Educational content

Free Membership

Bankrate is a good option for those who are new to monitoring their credit since it's fairly risk-free. The company doesn't charge any upfront costs to use its credit monitoring service. Bankrate also doesn't require consumers to input their credit card numbers.

While the company's credit monitoring service is pretty limited, it does give new users access to their TransUnion credit report and VantageScore. The company also provides a helpful credit score analysis that provides customers with the major factors contributing to their current credit score, which also gives newcomers solid advice on how to boost their score.

Website and Mobile App

Bankrate's website and mobile app have features to help users understand what they are looking at and answer questions about how to navigate to the information and sections they want to see.

This kind of guidance is especially important for those who are checking their credit for the first time. Overall, the entire site and mobile app are found to be well-constructed and easy to navigate. 

Educational Content

Bankrate provides fantastic educational content built right into its website rather than dumping all of it into a separate education center.

The financial institution does an impressive job explaining not only consumer credit in laymen's terms but also laying out why it matters in the big picture.

• Single-bureau credit reports
• No FICO scores
• Limited Website Information

Single-Bureau Credit Reports

There are three major credit bureaus: Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. Each maintains a separate copy of your credit report, as is explained in this article.

Unfortunately, Bankrate only pulls and monitors one of those reports and doesn't offer customers a way to obtain or monitor the other two. This leaves two-thirds of a customer's credit profile exposed and unmonitored unless customers use other services alongside Bankrate.

That said, it is fairly common to see companies that provide free credit monitoring services only offer single-bureau data. 

No FICO Scores

Bankrate doesn't provide its users with an option to obtain a FICO-branded credit score. Instead, the company only provides VantageScores. The problem with this is that VantageScore is not an industry-standard scoring model that is used by that many lenders.

Further, there have been numerous complaints online about VantageScores being off by as many as 100 points from the score a lender actually pulls. 

Limited Website Information 

Unlike some other companies in the industry, Bankrate only offers a single online page dedicated to its credit monitoring service. The company does not provide much information online regardings its credit monitoring offerings. And, this page can be difficult to navigate to.