5 Best Business Credit Monitoring Services

Tons of companies now offer free monitoring for your personal credit score―but what about for your business credit scores? 

We’ll be straight with you―you won’t have as many choices for monitoring your business credit. But you do have a few options, and we’ve rounded up the best ones. 

Some of these business credit monitoring companies will let you see full reports, while others will only give you relative information about your score. Some are paid, and some are free.

So which service will work best for your business credit concerns? Let’s find out.

For most business owners, Nav offers the best business credit monitoring.

Why? Well, for starters, Nav credit monitoring doesn’t cost anything. (CreditSignal is the only other free service)―meaning you can keep an eye on your business credit score without fitting it into your budget.

Free only goes so far, though. Fortunately, Nav has plenty of excellent features. Its credit monitoring service keeps tabs on your Dun & Bradstreet Paydex score, your Experience Intelliscore, and your Equifax Business Credit Risk Score―all the most important business credit bureaus. 

As an added bonus, Nav also monitors your personal credit score. In other words, you can get tons of valuable information from one service.

Now, Nav monitoring isn’t the most comprehensive. You won’t be able to see your numerical business credit score―just a Nav-assigned letter grade. 

Likewise, you won’t get access to a full business credit report. You’ll just get some information about new inquiries, legal problems, and other changes. Of course, if you see anything surprising, you can always choose to buy a full business credit report elsewhere (for cheaper than most monitoring services).

So for most businesses, Nav’s free, simple score monitoring and credit profile alerts will be enough.

CreditSuite packs a ton of value into a relatively low monthly subscription.

Free business credit monitoring services don’t usually let you see your actual business credit score, and they definitely don’t let you view your full business credit report. CreditSuite’s paid service, however, does both of those things. 

With your subscription, you’ll get access to both your Paydex score and your Intelliscore. Plus, you can view reports for both. No, you won’t get any information about Equifax or other business credit bureaus―but most businesses won’t need that data anyway.

If you’re willing to pay for business credit monitoring, CreditSuite’s cheap subscription offers the most bang for your buck.

If you only care about your Paydex score, Dun & Bradstreet CreditSignal offers free monitoring.

When you first sign up, you’ll get 14 days of detailed information about your Paydex score. That means 14 days of seeing your actual business credit score and other risk ratings. After that 14 days, you’ll only get relative information. In other words, you’ll get alerted that your business credit score rose or fell, but you won’t know your actual score.

You’ll also get some other essential information. For example, you’ll be able to see when someone makes a credit inquiry (but you won’t be able to see who made the inquiry).

CreditSignal may not offer the most robust business credit monitoring―but for a free service, it’s not bad.

Just want to monitor your Experian Intelliscore? Experian’s Business Credit Advantage lets you do just that.

When you sign up for Business Credit Advantage, you get to view your Intelliscore at any time. You can also access your full, detailed Experian business credit report whenever you want. Basically, you’ll know whatever Experian has on your business. 

Plus, you’ll get business identity monitoring from Experian. Its CyberAgent product will look for stolen information about your business across the web. Note that you will have to pay a yearly fee for Business Credit Advantage, but you’re getting both credit and identity monitoring in return. 

So yes, Business Credit Advantage only monitors one business credit bureau―but if that’s all you need, it’s got some nice identity theft extras for you.

CreditMonitor is another service from Dun & Bradstreet, which means it focuses exclusively on Paydex scores.

But unlike CreditSignal, CreditMonitor lets you view your numerical Paydex score. It also lets you see detailed credit reports for your business, so you know exactly what lenders will see when they check your business credit. 

You will have to pay a relatively high fee to get CreditMonitor. Fortunately, Dun & Bradstreet tries to make it worth it by throwing in some extra features. For example, it lets you see how your business’s credit file compares to other businesses. It also gives you access to tons of legal business documents through LegalZoom.

While CreditMonitor may not be the cheapest service on this list, it offers plenty for businesses that want to dig into their Dun & Bradstreet business credit profiles.

Data Axle’s monitoring offers access to your business credit score and comprehensive business credit reports. The catch? It’s a proprietary Data Axle score and report. Most business credit card companies and lenders won’t care about your Data Axle score―they’ll look at Intelliscore and Paydex instead.

That doesn’t mean a Data Axle report can’t be useful. It still includes a lot of the information found on other business credit reports, so it might still give you a general idea of how your business credit is doing. 

But since Data Axle plans start at a pricey $179 a month, we think you’re better off going with one of the monitoring companies above.

CreditSafe, like Credit.net, has its own business credit score and report system. And again, that can be useful―especially since CreditSafe was designed for you to check on other companies’ credit rather than your own.

Still, we think you’ll get more value out of a credit monitoring service that tracks the more widely used business credit scores.

So if you want to see data about lots of other companies, CreditSafe can help. If you want to see data about your own business credit, choose a different service.

Business Credit Monitor is Equifax’s business credit monitoring service. As you can guess, that means it only monitors your Equifax business credit score (a.k.a. Your Equifax Business Credit Risk Score). 

Unfortunately, you can’t sign up for the service right now: Equifax seems to be overhauling its business credit products. When it comes back online, we’ll let you know.

There are several business credit bureaus out there, but Dun & Bradstreet (Paydex scores) and Experian (Intelliscore) have the most influence.

Equifax also tracks business credit (Equifax Business Credit Risk Score), and plenty of other companies have come up with their own business credit scores―including Credit.net and CreditSafe (both reviewed above).

The best way to build business credit is to simply use business credit. For example, get a business credit card or a business loan. As you make payments on time, you should naturally build business credit.

For more information, check out our guide to building business credit.

Your business probably has a business credit score, even if you haven’t intentionally created a business credit profile. Some bureaus (like Experian and Equifax) automatically create a credit file for you, complete with a business credit score.

Your business may not have a Dun & Bradstreet Paydex score, though. In most cases, you’ll have to manually sign up for a (free) D-U-N-S number from Dun & Bradstreet to start your credit file and get a Paydex score.

The exact information in your business credit file will depend on the credit bureau it’s with. It can include a number of details about your business’s credit history.

But generally speaking, you can expect to find stuff like this:

• Your business’s address and other contact info
• Your business’s industry
• Payment history for loans, lines of credit, and credit cards

Legal filings, including bankruptcies, judgments, and liens

No, you can’t get a free copy of your business credit report. Personal credit bureaus have to give you a free copy of your personal credit report each year, but business credit bureaus don’t.

You can get a general idea of what’s in your business credit report by using a business credit monitoring service like Nav. But if you want to see your actual business credit report, you’ll have to pay.

As a business owner, you’ll want to know your company’s credit score―or at least have a good idea of how high it is and what’s affecting it. The business credit monitoring services above make it easy to do so.

The right monitoring service for you will depend on which business credit reporting agency (or agencies) you care about and what details you want to know. Fortunately, you’ve got several options―paid and free―to choose from.  

Your business credit score matters, but it’s only one of many factors lenders look at. Learn more about the other business loan requirements they consider.

Disclaimer

At Business.org, our research is meant to offer general product and service recommendations. We don't guarantee that our suggestions will work best for each individual or business, so consider your unique needs when choosing products and services.