Best for identity theft insurance

Learn More

On LifeLock's website

---

• Provides up to $3 million in coverage
• Multiple monitoring features including dark web, home title, and social media monitoring
• Customer support experience is lacking

View More

Best for families

Learn More

On Aura's website

---

• Includes a password manager and VPN
• Robust tools for children’s security
• Pricey monthly cost

View More

Best for the price

Learn More

On Identity Guard's website

---

• Easy to use
• Includes extra features like a password manager
• No dedicated identity recovery services

View More

Credit reporting and identity theft protection are the perfect duo to help you protect your personal information. If your identity is stolen, bad actors won’t stop with just access to your credit; they’ll likely keep using your Social Security number (SSN) to access more of your identity and commit other forms of fraud.

You may already be receiving free credit monitoring services through a credit card or other financial service. These are great resources. However, they may not be giving you real-time alerts on your credit. The faster you’re notified of fraudulent activity, the more quickly you can work to remedy the issue.

Norton LifeLock, Aura, and Identity Guard are all identity theft protection services that also come with features to help restore your credit. They will work on your behalf to cancel credit cards and other information that may have been compromised.

Each of the paid services we looked at offer several tiers of protection, as well as plans for individuals, families, or couples. Let’s look at these top three services in more detail.

The best identity theft protection services with credit reporting 2023

To select our top three, we evaluated several identity theft protection services to see which ones offered credit reporting. From there, we determined which ones we thought were best based on pricing, features, and other factors. Here’s what we found.

• LifeLock: Best for identity theft insurance
• Aura: Best for families
• Identity Guard: Best for the price

Top 3 identity theft protection services with credit reporting 

Service	Norton LifeLock	Aura	Identity Guard
Individual monthly price	Starts at $7.50/mo for first yr	Starts at $12.00/mo	Starts at $6.67/mo
Family monthly price	Starts at $14.99/mo for first yr	Starts at $32.00/mo	Starts at $10.00/mo
ID theft insurance	Up to $3 million	Up to $5 million	Up to $1 million
Credit monitoring
3-bureau credit reports
Details	View Plans	View Plans	View Plans

LifeLock: Best for identity theft insurance

Learn More

On LifeLock's website

---

• Provides up to $3 million in coverage
• Multiple monitoring features including dark web, home title, and social media monitoring
• Customer support experience is lacking

Who it’s best for

Norton LifeLock is one of the best identity theft protection services on the market. One of the biggest things that sets it apart is the amount of identity theft insurance you can receive. With LifeLock’s Ultimate Plus plan, you can receive up to $3 million in identity theft insurance: $1 million for lawyers and experts, $1 million in reimbursement for stolen funds, and $1 million in personal expense reimbursement. This amount of insurance could help you with identity fraud resolution.

LifeLock offers three types of plans: Standard, Advantage, and Ultimate Plus. Each plan is available for one individual, two individuals, or two individuals and up to five kids. From our research, the Ultimate Plus plan is worth the extra few dollars a month because you receive up to $3 million in insurance. With a Family Ultimate Plus plan, each child will also receive up to $1,050,000 in coverage.

What we liked

LifeLock’s product is robust in its offerings and comes with many additional benefits to help you protect your identity. As mentioned before, the Ultimate Plus plan gives you the most bang for your buck. With this plan, you’ll get access to home title monitoring, social media monitoring, and 401(k) and investment activity alerts.

As far as credit protection, Ultimate Plus comes with three-bureau credit monitoring, while the Standard and Advantage plans come with one-bureau credit monitoring. But only the Ultimate Plus plan provides unlimited access to Equifax for daily credit score updates. You can also access all three credit bureaus (Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian) once per year.

Another feature that we liked is Identity Lock, which is LifeLock’s credit lock feature. This service allows you to lock your TransUnion credit file and lock payday loans. Payday loan lenders don’t usually pull your credit report to approve your loan. LifeLock will notify you if someone uses your SSN or bank account information to open an account with a short-term lender.

Identity Lock allows you to take a proactive approach to protecting your credit. By locking your credit report, no one can take advantage of your identity by opening unauthorized accounts in your name. If you need to open a new account, you can unlock your account and apply for the credit.

What we didn’t like

LifeLock is expensive, and the best protection plan is also the most expensive one. While we found LifeLock to be one of the best and the identity theft insurance is top-notch, it is still quite an investment. LifeLock is better suited for someone with significant assets and is looking for peace of mind with their identity protection.

The Standard and Advantage plan limit the accessibility of credit monitoring too. You only receive access to one credit bureau with the lower tier plans. You also do not receive access to your credit report and scores with the Standard plan.

LifeLock features

Read Our LifeLock Review

Aura: Best for families

Learn More

On Aura's website

---

• Includes a password manager and VPN
• Robust tools for children’s security
• Pricey monthly cost

Who it’s best for

We thought Aura was best for those looking for family protection. With Aura’s family plan, you can get identity theft protection for an unlimited number of children and up to five adults. Aura’s family plan also offers additional features to help protect you and your family. Some of those features include the following.

• Child credit freeze: This allows you to freeze your child’s credit so that no one can access it.
• Fraud alert sharing: You can set up who in your family receives alerts for which family members. This gives you greater control in protecting every member of your family.
• Cyberbullying alerts: Receive alerts on bullying and online predators who are using popular PC games to prey on children.
• Parental controls: Aura gives you access to parental controls through Circle. This allows you to see how much time your kids are spending online and filter out harmful sites.

With these additional features, Aura is the most comprehensive for protecting your family. Aura also offers up to $1 million in insurance for each adult member of your plan. These features can help you prevent child identity theft, along with helping protect the adults in your family.

What we liked

Aura’s credit and identity monitoring is great. With Aura, you gain access to your annual credit reports from the three major credit bureaus, a monthly credit score from VantageScore, and an Experian credit lock.

We also enjoy the easy-to-navigate dashboard, which gives you all the information you need at a glance. Aura will alert you to any critical alerts that need your attention. These could be based on new credit accounts on your credit report or the discovery of your personal information on the dark web.

All of Aura’s plans include online and device security features such as an antivirus, a virtual private network (VPN), a password manager, and a storage vault. These extra features allow you to be proactive in protecting your personally identifiable information.

What we didn’t like

Aura only offers access to your monthly VantageScore. You don’t receive access to your FICO score. While the VantageScore is becoming more popular, the FICO score is still the industry standard. Credit score tracking allows you to keep up with your score and determine if lenders will approve you when you apply for financing.

If you go to a car dealership, they’ll likely ask if you know your score to help them gauge how much of a loan you may be approved for. If that dealership uses FICO scores, but you’re only familiar with your VantageScore, you may misrepresent where your credit score sits.

Similar to LifeLock, Aura is a bit more expensive than other solutions. However, with all of the included features, you may be able to cancel your separate VPN, antivirus, or password manager subscriptions to save some money.

Aura features

Read Our Aura Review

Identity Guard: Best for the price

Learn More

On Identity Guard's website

---

• Easy to use
• Includes extra features like a password manager
• No dedicated identity recovery services

Who it’s best for

While we looked at several different identity theft solutions, we didn’t include any free ones. From our research, a paid identity theft solution pays for itself with the safety and security it provides.

That being said, Identity Guard is one of our favorite solutions that won’t break the bank. Identity Guard has several different tiers as well as monthly and annual plans, so you can choose the plan that works best for you. To get access to credit monitoring, you’ll want to sign up for at least the Total plan, which costs $11.99/mo.

What we liked

Despite the lower price, Identity Guard is still a comprehensive solution for credit monitoring and identity theft. All of its plans include $1 million in identity theft insurance. You also receive access to its password manager and a safe browsing tool. We also like that Identity Guard includes dark web monitoring and data breach notifications with all of its plans.

Identity Guard’s family plans also allow for unlimited children, which is a great benefit. It does not include as many extras as Aura, but you’ll still get family protection with Identity Guard.

What we didn’t like

While Identity Guard is easy to use, we had some trouble logging in to the app at times. When we received an alert in our email, it was hard to get to the details of the alert without being on a desktop.

Identity Guard offers three tiers of plans for individuals and families. However, the Value plan, which is the lowest tier plan, is too bare bones. With the Value plan, you won’t receive any credit monitoring services, and you will only get dark web monitoring and data breach notifications. Without credit monitoring, your identity can still be compromised, and you may not know it until the next time you need your credit report to get a loan.

IdentityGuard features

Read Our IdentityGuard Review

Honorable mentions

There are many other identity theft protection services available. We wanted to find the solutions that we felt made ID theft protection worth it.

From our research, Credit Sesame’s free plan provides adequate credit monitoring, but it doesn’t give users any identity theft protection. IdentityIQ offers some nice features, but contacting customer service or canceling your account is less than enjoyable.

Credit Sesame

Credit Sesame is another identity theft and credit monitoring solution. You can sign up for a Credit Sesame account for free to gain access to basic monitoring. With a free solution like this, everything inside the platform feels like an upsell.

Credit Sesame doesn’t include a lot of information on its website until you sign up for a free account. The free solution gives you access to your TransUnion credit score and credit monitoring alerts, but it doesn’t include identity theft or dark web monitoring. With a paid plan, you get up to $1 million in identity theft insurance.

Since the account benefits are secret until you’re signed up, we thought this solution was subpar. And even when we tested the premium features, we still found issues in navigating the dashboard and finding some of the solutions that the premium plan touted.

IdentityIQ

IdentityIQ didn’t make the list either, mostly because the company offers subpar customer support. If you want to cancel your free trial or your plan, you’ll have to stay on the phone for quite some time to talk to a customer service representative. While IdentityIQ does have some good features, its overall customer support left a lot to be desired.

Best identity theft protection with credit reporting FAQs

Bottom line: The best ID theft protection with credit reporting

The important part about choosing the right credit reporting and identity theft protection solution is choosing one that works for you. If you’re looking for insurance coverage in case you were a victim of identity theft, LifeLock has the most robust offering. 

Aura gives families peace of mind with additional tools to protect children’s identities online. Identity Guard is the most affordable solution, and you can choose from three different tiers.

If you're looking for additional options or features, check out our guide to the best identity theft protection companies.

3 best ID theft protection services with credit reporting 2023

	Starting price	Best for	Learn more
Norton LifeLock	Starts at $7.50/mo for first yr	Best for identity theft insurance	View Plans Read LifeLock Review
Aura	Starts at $12.00/mo	Best for families	View Plans Read Aura Review
Identity Guard	Starts at $6.67/mo	Best for the price	View Plans Read IdentityGuard Review

How we tested the best identity theft protection with credit reporting

We looked at various features offered by identity theft protection services. We wanted to make sure that they offered the necessary services to protect consumers’ identities and that they were also easy to use. Credit reporting and identity theft alerts are critical to keeping you safe, but it is also up to the consumer to check those alerts consistently for any suspicious activity.

Each of the services we looked at offered similar foundational features, including credit monitoring, dark web scanning, and identity theft insurance. However, we also looked at the additional features they provided to help consumers, such as Aura’s many tools to help protect children and families.

Price and accessibility were also important and, although the prices of each vary, we found that each of them was worth the cost in its own way. All of the solutions we looked at also offer mobile apps to help you monitor your credit and identity from anywhere.

Learn More

On LifeLock's website

---

• Provides up to $3 million in coverage
• Multiple monitoring features including dark web, home title, and social media monitoring
• Customer support experience is lacking

Author Details

Andrew Adams

About the Author

Andrew Strom Adams is a freelance writer focused on online privacy and digital security. He writes on various topics to help individuals protect themselves on the internet. Andrew has worked in legal marketing, technology, and startups. He has more than 12 years of experience in marketing and communications. He holds an M.B.A. from Westminster College and a B.A. in journalism from Oklahoma Baptist University. When he’s not writing, he’s playing with his two kids or watching reality TV.