Experian Review 2024: Is the Free Credit Monitoring Service Good? [Tested]

Monitoring your credit with Experian’s free credit monitoring service helps you stay on top of your score. You’ll also have access to your credit reports from all three bureaus through its thoughtful and user-friendly dashboard. But when we tested the free service, we weren’t thrilled with the constant prompts to open new credit cards or take out a loan.

Experian offers a friendly way to see what items affect your credit and who your debtors are. It even includes tips on how to improve your score. You just have to ignore all the credit and loan offers.

Read on for our full experience and information on additional services like identity theft protection.

Experian review at a glance

Price	Free
Free plan	Yes
Financial account monitoring	Yes
Credit score	Yes – Experian
Credit score update frequency	Daily
Credit report	Yes – Experian, Equifax, TransUnion
Credit report update frequency	Up to daily
Credit lock	No
Credit analysis	Yes
Credit building	Yes
Extras	Free identity protection scan
Learn more	Get Experian

We last tested Experian on December 5th, 2024.

Our experience

Experian gave us a lot with our free credit monitoring service, but we were a little annoyed by the push to sign up for credit cards and loans.

We appreciated the tools that helped us understand our credit better. Even though there weren’t a ton of action items from the credit evaluation, Experian did give us better insights to make smarter money decisions.

Signing up for Experian was similar to signing up for many other credit monitoring services. We had to input our social security number (SSN) and provide basic information. After we were done, an error message was immediately displayed, telling us nothing had gone through and that our order had been canceled.

This actually happens fairly often when signing up for services. It’s a coding issue on the website that might be caused by a disconnect between the signup page and being rerouted to a login or dashboard.

We returned to the login page to see if our registration went through. It did, and we were able to log in to our dashboard. It immediately displayed our credit score and some offers for raising our score and getting a better rate on car insurance.

We were able to explore a few other areas. The Money section monitored our accounts and gave us practical advice, while the Protection section mostly wanted us to upgrade to the identity theft protection service.

We also had the opportunity to peruse credit cards, loans, auto, and insurance. Each category’s main focus was to sell us something, which is likely how Experian makes revenue since credit monitoring is free, but it felt a little predatory.

This push to apply for additional lines of credit or to upgrade to the paid identity theft protection service popped up repeatedly during most of our actions on the site. When we logged back in, we were immediately met with a screen prompting us to upgrade. Another login yielded a bevy of credit card offers.

Overall, the service is an easy way to keep an eye on your daily credit fluctuations and spending, but the pushiness to sign up for new accounts and services was off-putting.

We liked the credit analysis tools but wished there was a way to freeze our credit with the service. Experian is worth using, but we suggest ignoring all the upsells.

Experian prices and subscriptions

Experian credit monitoring is a free service with some useful features. There are upgrade options if you want to add identity theft protection services. We’ve already extensively tested Experian IdentityWorks services if you want to learn more about that product.

Experian features

This free service offers plenty of features to monitor and improve your credit. They include:

• Three bureau credit reports
• Credit monitoring
• Credit analysis
• Credit building tools
• Money management
• And more

Credit monitoring

The credit monitoring feature was ready as soon as we logged into our dashboard. Below, it’s redacted, but we saw our credit score with the date beside it.

Credit reports and scores

Experian had the option for us to check our free credit reports from all three bureaus. While it didn’t tell us how frequently we could see our Equifax and TransUnion reports, our Experian report was updated daily. In fact, Experian Alerts notifies you about real-time changes to your credit report, so you’re always in the know.

Credit analysis

Experian offers line items on what’s affecting your credit and a breakdown of your debit, utilization, and other factors. Since each credit item is listed separately, it was easy for us to check for anything we may want to dispute.

Credit builder

Experian Boost aims to help raise your credit score by counting things you do every day, like paying your bills, rent, and other accounts. It does mention that not all creditors will check this FICO score, nor will they always pull your Experian report. There could be a discrepancy between what you see on your credit report and what a potential creditor may see.

Money management tools

By linking our financial accounts, such as our bank and credit cards, Experian could track our spending habits and make suggestions on how to save a little more money. It’s also a central dashboard for us to see charges, so we can dispute anything fraudulent that may pop up.

Bonus features

There aren’t a ton of bonus features with this service, outside of applying for new lines of credit or doing a privacy scan. The privacy scan is aimed at getting you to sign up for the identity theft protection service.

Is Experian safe to use?

Experian uses two-factor authentication (2FA) during login by sending you a code via text or phone call. You’ll then need to input that code when you log in. We also found that Experian logged us out automatically if we were idle for 5 minutes, so that’s another level of protection.

Experian customer support

Support type	Experian
Email or live chat
Phone
Online guides or forums

We spent a decent amount of time clicking through the Contact Us prompt in the help center, only to be met with online guides. There are numbers available, but they’re sales and business-oriented. For the most part, you’re on your own.

Top alternatives

If you need more robust identity theft protection than Experian offers, consider one of our other tested recommendations below. Staying on top of your credit means getting the best interest rates and deals when you need your credit score to work for you.

FAQs

Bottom line: Is Experian good?

Despite the constant prompts to upgrade or apply for new credit, Experian credit monitoring provides useful tools and information. This is a good service if you’re serious about monitoring your credit and want helpful tips on improving it.

The best credit monitoring services always offer base features for free. Upgrading to identity theft protection is a choice, but keeping an eye on your credit should be something you do regularly. Experian makes this easy.