What Is VantageScore^® 5.0?

What Is VantageScore 5.0?

VantageScore 5.0 is the latest credit scoring model from VantageScore. The company announced its release in April 2025.

"VantageScore 5.0 is optimized for key lending functions, including loan originations and unsecured lending, providing greater accuracy for consumers with limited credit histories," says Andrada Pacheco, executive vice president and chief data scientist at VantageScore.

It's been almost 20 years since VantageScore released its first credit score model, VantageScore 1.0, in 2006. Overall, the company now has six credit scores, including VantageScore 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 and 4plus.

Who Uses VantageScore 5.0?

No one currently uses VantageScore 5.0 to make decisions because the scoring model is so new that it's not "live" yet. But many organizations use VantageScore's other credit scores, including:

• Banks and credit unions: Banks and credit unions might use a credit score when evaluating a loan or credit card application, or when reviewing current customers' financial health.
• Credit card issuers: A card issuer might use your credit score to determine whether you qualify for a card and what interest rate and credit limit to offer. Your credit score can also impact credit limit changes on your open cards.
• Auto lenders: Auto lenders might use a credit score when deciding your interest rate, down payment and loan offers.
• Other lenders: Other types of lenders, including online personal loan companies and mortgage lenders, also use credit scores to inform their decisions.

Even when VantageScore 5.0 goes live, it may not be employed by many immediately since most companies don't switch to the latest credit scoring model right away.

Switching models can require investing time and money into updating or creating systems and processes. Companies commonly test whether a new credit score will deliver a positive return on investment by providing better insights into potential borrowers before actively using the model to inform decisions.

For now, the VantageScore 5.0 page suggests that companies should pilot the new score and that using the score will help them confidently approve credit applications for more people. VantageScore also claims that VantageScore 5.0 can offer "up to a 9% lift on unsecured loan originations for thin credit file consumers" compared to the VantageScore 3.0 model.

In other words, lenders that use VantageScore 3.0 to review credit card, retail card and personal loan applications from people who are new to credit or don't have many credit accounts might benefit from switching to VantageScore 5.0.

Learn more: Things Lenders Look at Besides Your Credit Score

VantageScore 5.0 vs. VantageScore 4.0

Every version of VantageScore credit scoring models is slightly different than the one before. The main differentiators with VantageScore 5.0 are that the score is:

• Optimized for companies reviewing unsecured loan applications
• Designed to offer more consistent scores across your three credit reports
• Able to give lenders a more detailed view of consumers' credit behavior

"VantageScore 4.0 remains the most predictive credit score accepted for use in the conforming mortgage sector," Pacheco says. However, VantageScore 4.0 is the only VantageScore credit score accepted for that use.

Learn more: Why Are My Credit Scores Different?

Is VantageScore Accurate?

Credit scores are generally designed to help companies understand the likelihood that someone will miss a bill payment. New scores might consider changes in consumer behavior, data availability and technology to offer more precise results than previous scores.

For example, VantageScore 5.0 was trained on data from 2021 to 2023. As a result, it might better reflect how consumers act than a credit score model trained on data from an earlier time period.

VantageScore's credit scores are tri-bureau scores, meaning the same model can analyze and score your credit report from either Experian, TransUnion or Equifax. People tend to have different information in their credit reports, and the data might be stored in different ways, which can lead to score variations.

VantageScore 5.0 is designed to keep your scores consistent across the bureaus, and the company says 96% of consumers will have three scores within a 40-point range. Although all three are accurate, even if they're different, this can make it easier for people to understand where they're at and how something impacts their scores.

Learn more: How Is Your Credit Score Calculated?

How to Check Your VantageScore Credit Score

You can't check your VantageScore 5.0 yet because the score isn't live, but you can check other versions of your VantageScore credit scores. The VantageScore website lists some of the banks, lenders and personal finance websites that offer customers and users free VantageScore 3.0 or VantageScore 4.0 credit scores.

Monitor Your Credit for Free

VantageScore 5.0 will consider many of the factors that impact all your credit scores, including your payment history, credit usage and experience with different credit accounts. You can use Experian's free credit monitoring to review your Experian credit report and get real-time alerts about important changes. You'll also get to check and monitor a FICO^® Score^Θ for free, which can help you understand where you're at, but likely will be different from your VantageScore credit scores.