Does checking loan eligibility affect your CIBIL score?

Checking your loan eligibility doesn't affect your CIBIL score as long as nobody pulls your credit report to do it. On CrediVitt, nobody does. What can lower your score is an application: a lender asking a credit bureau for your report because you've applied for credit. One of those is routine. Four or five in a month is how people with perfectly decent profiles can end up refused everywhere.

The catch is that "check your eligibility" means different things on different sites. Some calculate from what you type. Some read your credit report first. A few quietly start a real application. From the outside they look the same.

Three ways your credit gets looked at

The middle column is where people get caught out. "Soft check" has become a marketing phrase, and it's used for very different things.

What CrediVitt's eligibility check does to your CIBIL score

Nothing. The check is a calculation on the figures you enter: your take-home salary, your employer, and the loans and credit cards you're repaying now. We run those against the criteria of each lender on the platform and show what each is likely to offer. We don't contact a credit bureau, so no enquiry is created, and no lender sees your details at this stage. You can run it as many times as you like with different amounts and tenures.

The trade-off is accuracy. Because we don't read your report, the estimate is only as good as what you tell us. Forget a credit card balance and you'll see an amount the lender won't match once it reads your report and finds the card.

Applying is different. The lender you choose may check your record with a credit bureau, and the consent box above the Apply button says so. That's the one enquiry you can't avoid. The point of checking first is to make it the only one.

How to tell what another site did

1. Read the consent box before you tick it. If it mentions your credit report, a bureau or CIBIL, or the site asks for your PAN and an OTP "to fetch your score", it's reading your report.
2. If it's reading your report, it should tell you whether that counts against you. If it doesn't say, ask before you go further.
3. Check afterwards. Pull your credit report and look at the enquiries section. Lenders that asked for your report because you applied are listed there.
4. Dispute anything you still don't recognise. Ask the lender first. If it can't explain the enquiry, CIBIL lets you raise a dispute against it online.

You don't have to pay for the report. Under an RBI direction, every credit bureau must give you one free full credit report, including your score, once each calendar year.

Why several applications close together hurt

A lender reading your report sees each enquiry and when it happened. One recent enquiry looks like someone shopping for a loan. Several in a few weeks, with no new loan opened, can look like someone being turned down and trying elsewhere.

Here's how that plays out. You need ₹5 lakh. Bank A offers ₹3 lakh. You apply at Bank B, then through a fintech app, then at Bank C. By the time Bank C reads your report it sees three fresh enquiries and no new account, and it has no way to know you were offered a loan and turned it down. It may well be more cautious than Bank A was, and you could end up further from ₹5 lakh than when you started.

If you've been refused, stop and find out why before trying again. Common reasons are income too low for the amount, too much existing debt, an employer the lender doesn't know, or something on your report. Applying elsewhere fixes none of them.

You may have read that several enquiries for the same kind of loan within a short window count as one. Indian credit bureaus don't publish a rule like that, so it's safest not to count on it.

Pre-approved offers and "see your rate" buttons

An SMS saying you're pre-approved for ₹4 lakh is an invitation to apply. It isn't an approval. If you go ahead, you've made an application, and the lender can check your report as it would for anyone else.

The same goes for buttons on lender websites. "Check your offer" and "Get my rate" sometimes lead straight into an application form. Read what the next screen asks you to agree to before you press continue.

Questions people ask

Does checking my own CIBIL score lower it?

No. CIBIL counts it as a soft enquiry, and your score isn't affected however often you check.

How many points does one hard enquiry cost?

CIBIL doesn't publish a points figure. It describes enquiries as having a minimal impact on your score, and says several hard enquiries in a short period can hurt it. Figures such as "2 to 5 points" or "5 to 10 points" that you may see elsewhere are estimates, not numbers from a bureau.

How long do enquiries stay on my report?

CIBIL keeps enquiries on your report for seven years. Once an enquiry is more than three years old it no longer counts towards your score, though it still shows on your report.

I'm a co-applicant on someone else's loan. Does that touch my score?

It can. When you join an application as a co-applicant, the lender may check your credit record too, which is an enquiry on your report. If the loan is sanctioned, you share responsibility for repaying it.

Before you apply anywhere

Get your free credit report and read it first. Every credit bureau in India must give you one full report free each calendar year; for CIBIL, it's at cibil.com/freecibilscore. The report has the same detail that bureau gives lenders, so you'll see what they see. If something's wrong, dispute it before you apply, not after. Then check what each lender is likely to offer and apply to one.

Check your eligibility · What CrediVitt does, and what it doesn't · How much loan can you get on your salary?

CrediVitt is not a lender. Loans are provided by RBI-regulated banks and NBFCs, at their sole discretion. The lender you apply to may check your credit report as part of its decision.