You can check your business credit score directly through the three major business credit bureaus: Dun & Bradstreet, Experian, and Equifax. Unlike personal credit scores, business credit scores aren’t available through a single free annual report. Each bureau has its own scoring model, its own portal, and its own pricing, so checking your full picture means visiting more than one.
What You Need Before You Check
Your business needs two key identifiers to have a credit profile at all. The first is an Employer Identification Number (EIN), which you get from the IRS when you register your business for tax purposes. The second is a D-U-N-S Number, a nine-digit identifier assigned by Dun & Bradstreet that serves as your business’s credit identity across lenders and suppliers.
If you don’t already have a D-U-N-S Number, you can request one for free through Dun & Bradstreet’s website. You’ll need to provide your business’s legal name, address, phone number, owner name, legal structure, year of creation, industry, and employee count. The standard process takes up to 30 business days, though an expedited option can deliver it within eight business days for a fee. Without this number, Dun & Bradstreet won’t have a file on your business, and many lenders pull from D&B first.
Checking Through Dun & Bradstreet
Dun & Bradstreet’s main score is the PAYDEX Score, which ranges from 0 to 100 and measures how promptly your business pays its bills. A score of 80 or higher signals that you’re paying on time or early. D&B also generates a Delinquency Score (predicting how likely you are to pay late) and a Failure Score (predicting how likely the business is to close).
The free tier, called D&B Credit Insights Free, gives you a general overview: basic company information, changes to your PAYDEX, Delinquency, and Failure scores, and a legal events summary. It won’t show you a full detailed report, but it’s enough to see where your scores are trending. If you want a complete view, you can purchase a standalone report or subscribe to the paid Credit Insights plan for deeper detail, including trade payment history and financial stress indicators.
You can also update your company information for free through D-U-N-S Manager. If you spot a late payment you believe is incorrect, that same tool lets you file a dispute.
Checking Through Experian
Experian’s business credit arm operates separately from its consumer side. The quickest way to see your score is through a one-time CreditScore Report, priced at $59.95. For more detail, including payment trends, public records, and company background, the ProfilePlus Report costs $69.95.
If you want ongoing access, Experian offers the Business Credit Advantage plan at $199 per year, which includes monitoring and alerts when something changes on your report. Their premium tiers (CreditScore Pro plans at $1,495 or $1,995 per year) are geared toward businesses that need to check credit on multiple companies, such as suppliers vetting new customers, and are overkill for someone just monitoring their own score.
Experian’s business scores use a scale of 1 to 100. They also generate an Intelliscore Plus, which predicts the likelihood of serious delinquency. Higher numbers are better on both scales.
Checking Through Equifax
Equifax offers business credit reports through its Small Business portal. Like the other bureaus, you can purchase individual reports or sign up for monitoring. Equifax’s scoring models include a Business Credit Risk Score and a Business Failure Score, both designed to help lenders assess how risky it is to extend credit to your company. The process is similar: visit the Equifax business credit site, search for your company, and purchase or subscribe.
Free and Low-Cost Alternatives
If you’d rather not pay bureau prices right away, a few other options exist. Bank of America customers enrolled in their Business Advantage 360 platform can access Dun & Bradstreet credit scores at no extra charge. Several other business banking platforms and fintech lenders show you at least a partial credit snapshot when you log in, though coverage varies.
Nav and similar third-party services offer freemium models that let you see summarized versions of your business credit data from multiple bureaus. The free versions are limited, but they can give you a useful baseline before you decide whether to pay for a full report.
Why Your Scores Differ Across Bureaus
Don’t be surprised if your numbers look different at each bureau. Each one collects data from different sources. Dun & Bradstreet relies heavily on trade references (suppliers and vendors reporting your payment behavior), while Experian and Equifax also pull from public records, banking data, and commercial databases. A vendor that reports to one bureau may not report to another, so your payment history can look different depending on where a lender checks.
This is also why it’s worth checking all three, at least once. A clean record at Experian doesn’t guarantee there isn’t an error or a missing trade line at D&B.
The Score You Can’t Check Yourself
There’s one more business credit score worth knowing about: the FICO Small Business Scoring Service (SBSS). This score, which ranges from 0 to 300, is widely used by banks and SBA lenders to evaluate small business loan applications for amounts up to $1 million. It blends data from your personal credit history with your business credit files and financial information.
The catch is that FICO SBSS is a lender-only product. There’s no consumer portal where you can look it up. You can’t purchase it directly. The way to influence it is to keep both your personal credit score and your business credit profiles in good shape, since the model pulls from both. If a lender declines your application based on this score, you can ask them what factors drove the decision.
How to Strengthen What You Find
Once you’ve pulled your reports, you may find thin files (not much data) or scores that are lower than expected. A few steps can help. First, make sure your vendors and suppliers are reporting your payment activity. Many small vendors don’t report to any bureau unless you ask. With Dun & Bradstreet, you can manually submit trade references through the Credit Insights product for their review and possible inclusion.
Pay every invoice on time or early. The PAYDEX score in particular rewards early payment, not just on-time payment. Open a business credit card and use it regularly, since card issuers typically report to at least one bureau. Keep your business information current at each bureau so there are no mismatches in your legal name, address, or industry code that could split your file or cause confusion.
If you spot errors, dispute them directly with the bureau that has the incorrect data. D&B handles disputes through D-U-N-S Manager. Experian and Equifax each have their own dispute processes on their business credit portals. Unlike personal credit disputes, which are governed by federal law with strict timelines, business credit disputes don’t have the same legal protections, so follow up if you don’t hear back within a few weeks.