Credit data in your app today, not next quarter.

Today. Sign up, confirm why you’re pulling credit, and your test and live keys are ready right away. Most teams send their first live lookup within the hour.

No. Going direct to a bureau usually means a membership application, an on-site inspection of your office, security audits and weeks of waiting. We hold the bureau relationship, so you skip all of it. You still agree to our terms and only pull credit for a permissible purpose (see Compliance).

Yes. The phone number is always part of the search, and you can send any of these with it:

• first_name and last_name
• address (street, city, state, ZIP)
• date_of_birth
• ssn
• email

They search name and address records as well as the number, so they find files the number alone can’t: a new number, a family plan, a recent port. If a lookup comes back no_match, retry it with their name. It’s the same price, and no match is still free. You can do the same from Check a number in your portal.

The SSN is encrypted the moment it arrives. Answers say what you searched with in searched_with, with only the SSN’s last 4.

Yes. Add https://phonenumbercreditscore.com/mcp to any AI assistant, agent or coding tool that supports the Model Context Protocol. It offers lookup_phone, unlock_tradelines, get_lookup, list_lookups, get_usage, get_balance, get_account, list_requests, check_approval and sandbox_numbers, so an agent can pre-qualify a caller, summarize their credit profile, flag fraud risk and draft the next step.

It connects with OAuth: you sign in on our page and choose what the assistant may do, live or test, a monthly spending limit and whether a person approves each paid lookup. The same rules apply as the API: a permissible purpose on every pull and the customer’s permission. It’s included with the API plan.

Yes, with OAuth 2.1. An app sends you to our sign-in page, you choose its access with 8 separate scopes, and it gets tokens that expire, rotate and stop the moment you disconnect it. You can register your own OAuth apps on API / Developer → Apps & AI, and every connection shows there with what it spent this month.

Yes. Keys that start with pncs_test_ return example people for any number and are never charged. Switch to your pncs_live_ key when you’re ready.

For the API, yes, but it’s one request and most developers finish in an afternoon. Teams that don’t write code can use our Zapier integration, now in beta: look people up from forms, CRMs and spreadsheets, with instant triggers.

Yes. Credit reports are covered by the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), and you can only pull one with a permissible purpose. For most API customers that’s the simplest one: the customer’s own written permission.

Tell us your purpose on every request with the purpose field, like consent or credit_application.

Yes. It doesn’t have to be a separate form. A clear line in your Terms of Service, credit application, sign-up flow or financing form works, as long as the customer actively agrees to it. A checkbox or a button that says what they’re agreeing to is best, not a link buried in the footer. For example:

By checking this box, I authorize [Your Company] and its service providers to obtain my credit report and score from TransUnion to [review my application for financing]. This won’t affect my credit score.

Keep a record of who agreed, when, and the exact wording they saw. We may ask to see it.

The common ones for API customers:

• The customer’s written permission, including a checkbox or e-signature.
• A credit application or other transaction the customer started, like financing a car or a roof.
• Renting an apartment, home, car or equipment they applied for.
• Reviewing an existing account the customer has with you.
• Insurance underwriting for a policy they asked about.

Not allowed: screening cold lead lists, marketing to people who never asked, checking on someone out of curiosity, and employment screening (that needs a separate disclosure process we don’t support).

No. It’s a soft inquiry, so it has no effect on their score and other lenders don’t see it.

If you deny an application, charge more, or ask for a bigger deposit because of what’s in a credit report, the FCRA requires you to send an adverse action notice. It names TransUnion as the bureau, says the bureau didn’t make the decision, and tells the person they can get a free copy of their report and dispute anything wrong. If a score played a part, include the score and its key factors, which come back in every response.

Treat it like the sensitive data it is: encrypt it, limit who can see it, keep it only as long as you need it, and never resell or share it. Financial businesses are also covered by the FTC’s Safeguards Rule under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.

No. Permission to pull credit is not permission to market to someone. Calls and texts have their own consent rules under the TCPA. Get that consent separately.

Yes. Every lookup is logged with its purpose. We may ask for your consent records, and we turn off keys that are used without a permissible purpose. It protects you, your customers and the data everyone relies on.

Every lookup includes their name, current address, phone details, a FICO^® Score 4 or VantageScore^® 4.0 with its key factors, trended income and debt-to-income, and their credit profile: credit card usage, on-time payment rate, length of credit history, number of accounts, total debt, available credit, recent inquiries, collections and debt by type.

Add tradelines for $2 more to get every account, payment and inquiry. See The report for the full list.

An estimate of the person’s income and how it has moved over time, not just a single snapshot. Paired with their monthly debt payments it gives you debt-to-income, so you can see whether they can afford a payment as well as whether they pay on time. If you’ve verified their income yourself, send it as income and we’ll use it for debt-to-income instead.

Tradelines are the individual accounts on someone’s credit file. Unlocking them adds every account, open and closed: the lender, account type, whose account it is (theirs, joint or an authorized user), when it was opened and closed, balance, limit, highest balance, monthly payment, term, last payment, past-due amount, up to 24 months of payment history with 30, 60 and 90-day lates, and the bureau’s remarks, like a repossession or an account the lender closed. You also get every inquiry by company and date, and public records like bankruptcies.

It’s $2 more per report, so $9.50 a lookup in total. Add include=tradelines to the request, or unlock them later on a past lookup with POST /v1/lookups/{id}/tradelines.

Yes. Set score_model=vantage4 for VantageScore^® 4.0, or make it your account’s default. FICO^® Score 4 (fico4) is the default. Same price either way.

It’s the FICO^® Score that TransUnion provides for mortgage lending, one of the most widely used scores for big decisions. More on FICO Score 4.

Phone details tell you the line type and carrier, and the name in the response tells you who the number belongs to. If it isn’t who you expected, send their name, address, date of birth or SSN to search the traditional way.

No match means no charge. If we find the person but their file is frozen or too new to score, the response tells you which, and it counts as a lookup because we found them. A frozen file opens again once they lift the freeze with TransUnion.

Your plan ($49 a month or $149 a year), plus lookups paid from a balance you add funds to in advance: $7.50 for each lookup that finds a match, and $2 more for each report you unlock tradelines on. Auto-refill tops the balance up from your card when it runs low, so lookups never stop; set the amount or turn it off any time. No setup fees.

There’s no monthly cap on lookups; only a spending limit you set yourself can pause them. From 1,000 lookups a month you qualify for volume rates: lower per-lookup pricing and priority support. We’ll reach out when you get there, or email [email protected].

Yes, on request. Email [email protected] with what you’re building and how many lookups you expect.

Any time. Monthly plans stop at the end of the month. Your keys turn off when the plan ends. Your balance is prepaid and isn’t refunded (see our Refund Policy), so add only what you’ll use.