Business credit is a financial profile tied to your company rather than to you personally. It tracks how reliably your business pays its bills, how much debt it carries, and how long it has been operating. Lenders, suppliers, and even potential partners use this profile to decide whether to extend financing, offer trade terms, or do business with your company. Unlike personal credit scores that range from 300 to 850, business credit scores typically run from 0 to 100.
How Business Credit Scores Work
Three major bureaus maintain business credit files: Dun & Bradstreet, Experian, and Equifax. Each uses its own scoring method, but all grade businesses on a 0 to 100 scale. Experian, for example, considers anything above 75 “excellent.” The scores reflect payment history with vendors and lenders, outstanding balances, company size, industry risk, and public records like liens or judgments.
Dun & Bradstreet’s most widely known score is the PAYDEX, which measures how promptly you pay suppliers relative to the agreed terms. A score of 80 means you’re paying on time; scores above 80 indicate you’re paying early. Experian and Equifax generate their own business credit reports with similar payment-focused metrics, and lenders often pull from more than one bureau before making a decision.
Business Credit vs. Personal Credit
Your personal credit is linked to your Social Security number. Business credit is linked to your company’s Employer Identification Number (EIN) and, at Dun & Bradstreet, to a separate nine-digit identifier called a DUNS number. Keeping these profiles separate matters because business credit protects your personal finances. If your company hits a rough patch, creditors with claims against the business can’t as easily reach your personal assets, assuming you’ve maintained proper separation.
That said, the wall between the two isn’t always solid. If you’re a sole proprietor, lenders generally treat your personal and business credit as one and the same. Even for incorporated businesses, many lenders still check the owner’s personal credit score alongside the business file. The threshold most traditional banks look for is a personal score of at least 670, while some online lenders will work with scores as low as 600. Increasingly, creditors use blended scoring tools that weigh both personal and business credit attributes together to assess small business risk.
Why Business Credit Matters
Strong business credit directly affects what you pay to borrow money. Interest rates on a business line of credit, for instance, range from about 3% to 60% or higher. The low end of that range goes to established businesses with strong credit profiles; the high end hits startups or owners with poor scores. On a $100,000 credit line, the difference between a 7% rate and a 25% rate is tens of thousands of dollars a year in interest costs.
Beyond borrowing, business credit influences supplier relationships. Vendors offering trade terms (letting you buy now and pay later) often check your business credit file before deciding whether to extend those terms and how generous to make them. A solid score can get you net-60 or net-90 payment windows instead of net-30, which gives you more breathing room for cash flow. Insurance companies, landlords, and potential business partners may also review your business credit before signing contracts.
Key Identifiers You Need
Two numbers form the foundation of your business credit identity. The first is an EIN, issued for free by the IRS. You’ll use it to pay taxes, open business bank accounts, and apply for business credit cards. The second is a DUNS number, issued for free by Dun & Bradstreet. You can apply for one directly on the D&B website. While the EIN functions like a tax ID, the DUNS number connects to a broader financial profile that tracks your creditworthiness, supplier relationships, and public records like lawsuits or liens. Potential lenders and partners use it to evaluate your company’s financial reliability.
You don’t strictly need a DUNS number to start building credit with Experian or Equifax, but having one opens the door to D&B’s reporting system and makes your business visible to a wider range of creditors and partners.
How to Build Business Credit
Building business credit starts with making sure your company is set up as a separate legal entity with its own EIN and bank account. From there, the process revolves around getting vendors and lenders to report your payment activity to the business credit bureaus.
The most accessible starting point is vendor trade credit, often called net-30 accounts. These arrangements let you purchase goods or services and pay the invoice within 30 days. Some vendors offer net-10, net-60, or even net-120 terms, though longer windows are typically reserved for established customers. The key detail is that not every vendor reports payments to credit bureaus. You want to work with ones that do, because unreported on-time payments don’t help your score.
If your business is brand new, start with your existing suppliers and ask whether they offer credit terms and report to Dun & Bradstreet, Experian, or Equifax. Some vendors require a certain number of cash purchases before they’ll extend credit to a new business. Others specialize in working with companies that are less than two years old or don’t yet have a credit history. Opening a business credit card that reports to business bureaus (not just personal bureaus) also helps establish a track record.
Once you have a few accounts reporting, the formula is straightforward: pay on time or early, keep balances reasonable, and add new trade references gradually. Monitor your business credit reports periodically to confirm that payments are being reported accurately. Errors in business credit files are not uncommon, and unlike personal credit, anyone can access your business credit report, so inaccuracies are visible to every potential lender or partner who looks you up.
How Long It Takes
You can start generating a business credit file within a few months of opening your first reporting trade accounts. Building a score that lenders consider strong typically takes one to two years of consistent on-time payments across multiple accounts. The timeline speeds up if you work with several vendors that report to bureaus simultaneously rather than adding them one at a time. Applying for a small business credit card early in the process gives you another reporting account that builds history while you establish vendor relationships.