Soft vs hard credit check: when each happens
Not all credit inquiries hurt your score. Understanding which ones do — and the "rate shopping window" that protects you when they do — is worth roughly 5-15 FICO points.
Soft inquiry: invisible to other creditors
A soft inquiry is a credit check that doesn't affect your credit score and isn't visible to other lenders. Every time you:
- Check your own credit report
- Get pre-approved offers from credit card companies
- Loanplaced runs a quote preview
- An employer runs a background credit check
- An existing creditor reviews your file
...a soft inquiry is logged, but only you can see it. Your FICO score is unchanged.
Hard inquiry: affects your score
A hard inquiry happens when you formally apply for credit and the lender pulls your full credit file. Hard inquiries are visible to all lenders for 24 months, and typically cost 3–8 FICO points that recover over 3–6 months.
Hard inquiries happen when:
- You submit a formal loan application (personal, business, auto, mortgage)
- You apply for a new credit card
- You apply for a mortgage refinance
- You request a credit limit increase (varies by issuer)
The rate-shopping window that protects you
Modern credit scoring models (FICO 9, FICO 10, and VantageScore 3.0+) treat multiple hard inquiries for the same loan type within a defined window as a single inquiry when calculating your score. This is called the "rate shopping window."
| Loan type | Rate shopping window | Applies to |
|---|---|---|
| Mortgage | 45 days | All models |
| Auto loan | 14–45 days | Model-dependent |
| Student loan | 14–45 days | Model-dependent |
| Personal loan | None | Every hard inquiry counts separately |
| Credit card | None | Every hard inquiry counts separately |
How Loanplaced structures inquiries
The typical Loanplaced flow:
- Quote preview — one soft inquiry (no score impact).
- Advisor review — no additional inquiry.
- Accept a specific offer — one hard inquiry, only from the lender you selected.
For borrowers who don't proceed after the quote preview, there is no hard inquiry ever. Loanplaced doesn't sell your application to lenders — the hard inquiry only happens if you formally proceed with a specific offer.
When a hard inquiry is actually worth it
A single hard inquiry is a low cost for meaningful savings. If applying results in a 1% APR reduction on a $30K loan over 60 months, that's ~$900 saved for 5 lost FICO points. Loanplaced advisors think of hard inquiries as investments — worth it when the offer is real, not worth it when you're "just curious."