The Difference Between a Soft Hit and a Hard Hit

There are two types of inquiries that a bank, credit card company, or other potential loan originator can make on your credit score.

These are called either a “soft hit” (”soft inquiry,” “soft pull” or “soft credit check” are synonymous terms) or a “hard hit.” (again, “hard inquiry,” “hard pull,” and “hard credit check” mean the same thing).

These terms are not official technical terms, but are instead lender jargon used to refer to the groupings of credit inquiries. Any inquiry that was, generally, initiated by someone else and doesn’t necessarily indicate an intention on your part to borrow money is known as the soft hit.

On the other hand, a credit inquiry that does represent a fairly immediate intent to borrow money is known as a hard hit. These are sometimes called voluntary credit inquiries, because you generally initiated them when you went in to apply for a loan.

A soft hit generally does not affect your credit score. These hits occur when a credit card company wants to evaluate your credit score, or when you ask for a copy of your own credit report. Lenders do not see these inquiries when they pull a copy of your credit report, and they do not negatively affect your credit score.

The credit agencies generally consider it a soft hit when a credit agency is verifying information that you gave them by running a credit inquiry. Banks looking at account status are also considered to be soft hits.

A hard hit, however, will negatively affect your score, if only slightly. These hits generally mean you have gone into a lender, filled out an application and have requested credit. If you go to a variety of banks and credit unions to get preapproval from each for a car or home loan, then each inquiry will show up on your credit reports.

These hits negatively affect your credit scores, since the very time that you decide to increase your debt load by borrowing money, you become at least a slightly higher risk for not paying it back. Clearly, if you had no debt, you’d be a great risk for having no problems paying it back.

Because the higher the amount of debt, the more difficult it becomes to repay, the credit agencies adjust your score in advance to reflect this slightly higher risk.