How Long Do Hard Inquiries Stay on Your Credit Report?
A hard inquiry sits on your credit report for two years, yet FICO scores only count it for the first twelve months. Here's the month-by-month timeline, what one usually costs, and when an inquiry is worth disputing.
On this page
- How long do hard inquiries stay on your credit report, month by month
- What one inquiry costs while it counts
- The second year still matters to some lenders
- Timing a big application around old inquiries
- When an inquiry doesn’t belong there
- What you can’t dispute
- Inquiries in someone else’s file
- Frequently asked questions
A hard inquiry stays on your credit report for up to two years. The part most people don’t realize is that FICO scores only count it for the first 12 months, so for the second year it’s sitting there, visible to anyone who reads your report, while doing nothing to your score. After two years it drops off entirely.
That’s the short version of how long hard inquiries stay on your credit report. The longer version matters if you’re about to apply for something big, or if you’ve just spotted an inquiry you don’t remember authorizing.
If you’re not sure whether a particular check was hard or soft in the first place, our explainer on soft pulls vs. hard pulls sorts that out. This post is about the clock.
How long do hard inquiries stay on your credit report, month by month
Follow one inquiry through its life. Say you’re a fictional renter named Talia Brooks, and on March 10 you apply for a store credit card to get 20% off a $1,100 couch. The card issuer pulls your TransUnion file. That’s a hard inquiry, and it starts two separate clocks.
| Time since the application | On your report? | Counted in FICO scores? | Who notices |
|---|---|---|---|
| Day 1 to month 12 | Yes | Yes | The score, and anyone reading the report |
| Month 12 to month 24 | Yes | No | Only people reading the report line by line |
| After month 24 | No | No | Nobody |
myFICO’s page on credit checks puts it plainly: hard inquiries stay on the report for up to two years but only affect FICO scores for one.
So by the following March, Talia’s couch inquiry has stopped counting in her score. By the March after that, it’s gone from the report too.
The two-year figure is how the bureaus handle inquiries in practice. The federal rule is actually shorter. Under FCRA section 609(a)(3), when you ask a bureau for your file, it has to show you everyone who pulled your report for most purposes in the past year (two years for employment checks). The bureaus keep inquiries longer than the law requires them to disclose.
What one inquiry costs while it counts
Less than you probably fear. FICO’s own guidance is that for most people, one additional inquiry takes fewer than five points off. The “new credit” category that inquiries sit in is only about 10% of a FICO score, which you can see broken down with the other four categories on our scoring page.
Two situations make an inquiry cost more than average:
- A thin file. myFICO notes that inquiries can have a bigger impact when you have few accounts or a short history. If you have two cards and 18 months of history, an inquiry is a bigger share of the evidence. Our post on thin credit files explains why.
- A cluster. Six store cards in a month reads very differently from one card a year. FICO’s research found that people with six or more inquiries can be up to eight times more likely to declare bankruptcy than people with none, which is why a burst of applications gets weighed more heavily.
The ranking of inquiries against everything else that moves a score (spoiler: they’re near the bottom) is in what actually hurts your credit score.
The second year still matters to some lenders
The “it stops counting after 12 months” line leaves something out. A score is one thing. A human reading your report is another.
Mortgage underwriting is the clearest example. Fannie Mae’s Selling Guide tells lenders to review the inquiries section for how many inquiries there are and how recent they are. When there are recent ones, the lender has to confirm you didn’t open new credit that isn’t on the report or the application, and if you did, you get qualified with that new monthly payment included.
In practice, that’s why loan officers so often ask borrowers to write a short note explaining each recent inquiry. “Applied for a store card for a couch, approved, $1,100 limit, paid off” is all it takes. If the inquiry led nowhere (“applied, was declined, no account opened”), say so.
Mortgage lenders also pull older FICO versions. The TransUnion score in that set is FICO® Score 4, and the older versions use a 14-day window for grouping rate-shopping inquiries instead of the 45 days newer versions use. Our post on the FICO scores mortgage lenders use covers that set. If you’re comparing lenders, keep every application inside a short rate-shopping window so the pulls get grouped.
Timing a big application around old inquiries
If you know a mortgage or car loan is coming, the inquiry clock gives you a simple planning rule: stop applying for other credit about a year out.
Take Marcus Ferreira, fictional, who applies for a mortgage in September. This is how his earlier applications look from the lender’s chair that month:
- A credit card, 13 months earlier. Off the score, still on the report. Probably a one-line question at most.
- An auto loan, eight months earlier. Still counts, and the underwriter will ask about it, partly because there’s a car payment to include in his debt-to-income math.
- A store card at checkout, three months earlier, for a 15% discount on a $400 grill. Counts, gets questioned, and saved him $60.
That last one is the trade most people would undo. Five points rarely decides anything on its own, but mortgage pricing moves in score bands, and a borrower sitting a few points above a cutoff can slide below it right before the rate lock.
The cleaner plan for Marcus: no new applications for the 12 months before he applies, then do all his mortgage shopping in a tight window. Then let the underwriter see a quiet file.
When an inquiry doesn’t belong there
Every hard inquiry needs a reason the law accepts: you applied for credit, a lease, insurance or something similar, or you gave written permission. An inquiry you can’t account for is either a boring mix-up or the first visible sign of someone applying for credit in your name.
Start by figuring out which it is. Pull your reports for free at AnnualCreditReport.com and compare the inquiry dates with your own calendar. A lot of mystery names turn out to be a bank a car dealer sent your application to, or a lender whose legal name doesn’t match its brand. Our walkthrough on finding out who checked your credit goes through that detective work step by step.
If it still doesn’t make sense:
- Call the company named on the inquiry. Ask what application or account it’s connected to. Write down who you spoke with and the date.
- Dispute it with each bureau that shows it. The CFPB lays out how to dispute an error on your credit report. Say specifically that you didn’t apply for credit with that company and didn’t authorize the check. The bureau generally has 30 days to investigate.
- Check for new accounts. If someone got as far as an inquiry, look hard at the accounts section of all three reports for anything you didn’t open.
- Freeze your files. A freeze stops new creditors from pulling your report at all. It’s free, and our comparison of a credit freeze vs. a credit lock explains which to use.
If you find accounts that aren’t yours, it’s identity theft, and the FTC’s IdentityTheft.gov builds a recovery plan and the report you’ll need for the bureaus. This is general information, not legal advice, and the same steps for disputing a credit report error apply to accounts as well as inquiries.
What you can’t dispute
If you applied, the inquiry is accurate, and an accurate inquiry stays for its two years. That includes the ones you regret, the ones where you were declined, and the ones you didn’t realize would be hard pulls. Anyone who promises to “remove inquiries” you actually authorized is selling you something the law doesn’t allow them to deliver.
The upside is that time does the work for you. Twelve months and it’s out of the score. Twenty-four and it’s off the report.
Inquiries in someone else’s file
If you’re a landlord or lender checking an applicant with their permission, the inquiry count is a context clue, not a verdict. One or two inquiries in the past year is normal life. A string of them in the last 60 days, especially next to new accounts or rising balances, is worth a polite question.
Our lookup shows inquiries as part of the credit profile, along with the applicant’s FICO Score 4, payment record, credit usage and total debt. It runs as a soft pull, so checking someone never adds a hard inquiry of its own. You can see what’s included on how it works.
One habit worth keeping either way: before any application that matters, pull your own reports, count the inquiries from the last 12 months, and have a one-line explanation ready for each one. It takes ten minutes and saves an awkward email from an underwriter.
Frequently asked questions
Can I pay to have a hard inquiry removed early?
No legitimate service can remove an accurate inquiry before its two years are up. If you applied for the credit, the inquiry is correct, and the bureaus have no reason to delete it. Only inquiries that are wrong or unauthorized can be disputed off.
Do hard inquiries affect VantageScore the same way?
Not exactly. VantageScore is a separate model with its own rules for weighing and grouping inquiries, so the same inquiry can move your VantageScore and your FICO scores by different amounts. In both, the effect of a single inquiry tends to be small.
Does a hard inquiry fall off on the exact two-year date?
Roughly. The bureaus drop inquiries once they're about two years old, and the change shows up the next time your report is generated. Don't plan a big application around a specific day; give it a week or two of cushion and check your report first.
