What Is the Average Credit Score? (And How Yours Compares)

A few years ago a friend called me from a dealership parking lot, half laughing and half furious. The finance manager had just told her that her credit score was “about average,” then quoted her a rate more than two points above the one on the window sticker. “Average,” she said. “How is average not good enough?” I’ve thought about that call often since, because it captures what makes this number so slippery. We hear average and think passing grade. Lenders hear coordinate on a map — a point sitting above some pricing cutoffs and below others, and the gap between those is measured in thousands of dollars.

So here is the number you came for, stated plainly. The average FICO Score in the United States is 714, according to the FICO Score Credit Insights Report that FICO published in March 2026 using consumer data through October 2025. Experian, working from a September 2025 snapshot of its own file, puts the 2025 national average at 713. Those are the same story told a few weeks apart. What one number can’t tell you is the rest: how the average splits by age and state, where it has traveled over the last decade, and why matching it is a weaker goal than it sounds. That’s what follows — published figures, named sources, no lectures about your coffee.

The Direct Answer: What Is the Average Credit Score Right Now?

FICO publishes the figure most people mean by this question, because FICO scores are what most lenders actually pull. In its Score Credit Insights Report released March 24, 2026, FICO put the average U.S. FICO Score at 714, using data through October 2025 — down two points on the year. Ethan Dornhelm, head of scores analytics at FICO, attributed the slip to “the resumption of required student loan payments and a continued, modest rise in mortgage delinquencies.”

Experian, which maintains one of the three national credit files, reported in its March 30, 2026 analysis that the average FICO Score was 713 as of September 2025, down from 715 the year before. That, Experian noted, was the first annual decline since 2013, ending a decade-plus streak of increases.

Why FICO and VantageScore Report Different Averages

Here is what trips up nearly everyone researching this for long. VantageScore — the model jointly developed by the three credit bureaus — reported an average VantageScore 4.0 of 702 for June 2026 in its CreditGauge release of July 29, 2026, up from 700 in December 2025. So which is right, 714 or 702?

Both. They measure the same population with different rulers. The two models share a 300–850 range, but weight late payments, thin files, and collections differently and cover slightly different sets of consumers. A model scoring more thin-file borrowers naturally produces a lower average, because those files have less history to reward. If you’ve ever wondered why the number in your banking app doesn’t match a lender’s quote, this is usually why — something I dug into in my look at how accurate free score apps really are. Compare FICO to FICO and VantageScore to VantageScore, and never assume one is lying to you.

What “Average” Does and Doesn’t Tell You

An average is one point pulled from a distribution of hundreds of millions of people, and it flattens enormous texture on the way out. Take one figure from that same FICO report: 48.1% of consumers now hold scores of 750 or higher, up from 43.3% in 2019. Nearly half the country sits well above the average, which isn’t what the word suggests. The distribution is lopsided — a large high-scoring block on one side, a smaller delinquent group pulling the mean down on the other. FICO called it a K-shaped pattern: card, auto, and personal loan delinquencies leveling off while mortgage delinquencies climbed toward pre-pandemic levels. Two credit economies, averaged into one number that describes neither.

So what is it good for? Two things: a sanity check on whether you’re roughly where most people are, and a trend line that says something real about household stress. What it isn’t is a score to aim for.

Where the Average Falls on the FICO Scale

A 714 sits inside FICO’s “Good” range, which myFICO defines as 670–739 and describes as near or slightly above the average U.S. consumer. Above it sit Very Good (740–799) and Exceptional (800+); below it, Fair (580–669) and Poor (under 580). That’s as far as I’ll take the bands here, because I’ve written the deeper version: for the honest accounting of what each tier unlocks — which rates, which approvals, which deposits get waived — my breakdown of whether 720 is a good credit score covers it. This page is where you stand relative to everyone else; that one is what standing there buys you.

Average Credit Score by Age and Generation

This is where the national average stops being a blur. Experian’s 2025 analysis breaks it down by generation, and the spread is the most useful thing in the data.

Source: Experian, average FICO Score by generation, 2025 data (published March 2026).

Why Older Cohorts Score Higher — and Why It Isn’t Virtue

Eighty-two points separate Gen Z from the Silent Generation, and I want to be direct about what that gap is and isn’t, because the internet is full of takes implying young people are worse with money. The dominant driver is time. Length of credit history is a scored factor, and the one no behavior can accelerate — a 22-year-old with flawless payments and a two-year-old card is structurally capped below where she’ll be at 45 doing nothing differently. Older files also hold a wider mix of accounts, have had more time for negative marks to age off, and carry higher limits, which mechanically lowers utilization at identical spending. That isn’t discipline. It’s arithmetic that runs on a calendar.

The implication cuts two ways. If you’re young, your score is an unfinished document, and the best move is to start the clock early and keep it clean — the whole premise of building credit from scratch. If you’re older and below your generation’s average, that gap is worth investigating, because the time-based advantages are already yours and something else is doing the work.

“Nobody in a credit department has ever compared you to the national average. They compare you to a cutoff. That’s the only number in this article that will ever cost or save you money.”

Average Credit Score by State

Geography produces the second-widest spread: Experian’s 2025 state-level figures put a 64-point gap between the highest and lowest state averages.

Source: Experian, average FICO Score by state, 2025 data (published March 2026).

What Regional Differences Actually Reflect

It would be easy, and wrong, to read that table as a ranking of regional character. State averages mostly track economics: median household income, the share of it eaten by housing and transportation, and how much shock absorption a household has. When a transmission fails where incomes are lower and the safety net thinner, it’s likelier to become a delinquency. That’s margin, not morals. There’s also a compositional effect: older populations skew higher for exactly the age reasons above.

The takeaway is small but real: if you live in a lower-average state, you aren’t competing against your neighbors for a loan. Cutoffs are national. Your state’s average describes your environment, not your prospects.

How the National Average Has Moved Over the Last Decade

The trend is the part most articles skip, and it’s the most interesting data here. FICO’s own published figures trace a long climb: the national average stood at 696 in October 2015, reached 708 by April 2020 and 716 by October 2021, and peaked at 718 in April 2023 before easing to 717 in October 2023 — its first decrease in a decade. The drift continued: 715 as of February 2025, then 714 in March 2026.

Three forces did most of that work. Negative marks from the 2008–2010 era aged off files. Most tax liens and civil judgments were removed from credit reports, lifting millions of files mechanically. And in 2020 and 2021, stimulus payments and payment pauses pushed balances and delinquencies unusually low — which is why the sharpest gains line up with the pandemic, not better habits.

What Drove the Recent Dip

The reversal has clearer fingerprints. FICO pointed to resumed federal student loan delinquency reporting — after a multi-year pause, delinquencies began hitting credit files again in February 2025, affecting more than eight million borrowers — plus a continued rise in mortgage delinquencies. VantageScore’s December 2025 CreditGauge saw the same pressure from another angle: the subprime share of consumers grew from 18.5% to 19.0% between December 2023 and December 2025, a gradual migration into lower tiers driven by affordability strain.

The most recent reading is brighter. VantageScore’s June 2026 CreditGauge put the average back at 702, citing improved card delinquency rates and average utilization falling to 49.61% from 50.78% a year earlier. Utilization falling nationwide is a reminder of how much of this number is driven by how credit cards actually work — by the balance on your statement relative to your limits.

The Reframe: Average Is Not a Goal

Now the part I most want you to take with you, and the reason my friend in that parking lot was right to be annoyed. No underwriting system compares your score to the national average. Lenders price in tiers, and each tier has a hard edge: a mortgage program prices in bands, an auto lender has a cutoff where the rate steps down, a card issuer has a floor for its best product. Those edges sit at round numbers, and they don’t care that you’re two points above or nine below what the typical American has.

So chasing “average” is the wrong thing in both directions. At 705, being eight points under the average is meaningless — but being fifteen under a 720 cutoff on the loan you’re applying for in November is not, and that gap a single balance payment can close. At 730 you’re comfortably above average and still a tier below the pricing you’d get at 740, often worth more than the whole distance you traveled to get there.

So replace “am I average?” with this: what is the next cutoff that applies to me, and how far am I from it? Ask the lender what tier you’d need for their best pricing; most will tell you. Then you have a real target — usually 15 to 30 points away, not 100 — and a deadline. That’s a project. “Get above average” is a mood.

How to Move Up From Average

If you’ve landed near 713 and want to move, the levers are unglamorous and well established, and I’m not going to insult you with advice about skipping coffee. This number responds to structural changes, not small acts of penance.

The fastest is credit card utilization, because unlike payment history it resets every statement cycle. Getting reported balances well below your limits — paying before the statement closes, not just before the due date — can show up within a cycle or two, along with the other moves in my guide to raising your credit score fast. The second is eliminating the balances, which fixes utilization permanently rather than monthly; start with a realistic plan for paying off credit card debt. The third is time plus consistency — on-time payments, aging accounts, no unnecessary closures. And if you’re aiming past the tiers entirely, reaching an 800 score is mostly a study in patience.

If you came here to find out whether you’re normal, I hope the honest answer helps: the range of normal is enormous, it shifts every year for reasons that have nothing to do with you, and almost half the country sits above the number everyone quotes. Being near the average is not a problem to solve. Being fifteen points below the cutoff on a loan you’re about to apply for is — and that’s a far smaller, far more solvable thing. So here’s your assignment for tonight: pull up your score wherever you have free access, write it down with today’s date, and beside it write the one credit decision you expect to make in the next twelve months. Two lines on one page. Tomorrow you can find what tier that decision requires, and you’ll have a real target instead of a vague worry. You’re closer than you think.

The Paystream shares information and frameworks to help you make your own decisions; it isn’t personalized financial, legal, or tax advice. For guidance specific to your situation — especially if your payments feel unmanageable — consider speaking with a nonprofit credit counselor or a qualified professional.