What is a credit inquiry?
Every time a company looks at your credit history with a bureau (Equifax, Experian, or TransUnion), the bureau logs it as an inquiry. The bureau doesn’t care why the company looked. It just records: who looked, when, and what kind of check it was.
There are exactly two kinds: soft and hard. The difference matters more than most people realize.
Soft inquiries: invisible to other lenders
A soft inquiry (sometimes called a “soft pull”) is a credit check that does not affect your credit score and is not visible to other lenders when they look at your report.
Soft inquiries happen all the time. Common examples:
- You check your own credit through a free service like Credit Karma, your bank app, or AnnualCreditReport.com.
- A lender pre-qualifies you for an offer (“You’re pre-approved for...” mailers, rate previews on lender websites).
- An employer runs a background check with your written permission as part of hiring.
- An existing creditor reviews your account (your credit card company, your auto loan servicer) for account management.
- A lender screens you for a marketing list before sending you an offer.
- A comparison or matching service (like Cash Rvyn) checks soft-inquiry eligibility data to show you matches.
Soft inquiries do show up on a copy of your own credit report. They look like any other inquiry to you. But when another lender pulls your file, the soft inquiries are filtered out before that lender sees anything. It’s like a back-channel note that other lenders can’t read.
Hard inquiries: visible and counted
A hard inquiry (a “hard pull”) is a credit check tied to an actual application for credit. You filled out an application and authorized the lender to check your full credit file in order to make a decision.
Hard inquiries happen when you apply for:
- A credit card
- A personal loan
- An auto loan
- A mortgage
- A student loan
- Some apartment leases (depending on the property)
- Some utility accounts that require a deposit waiver
Hard inquiries are visible to other lenders when they pull your report. They do affect your credit score — though usually not by as much as people fear.
The clearest test: if a credit check happened because you formally applied for credit and signed a disclosure, it’s a hard pull. If it happened because someone wanted to pre-screen you, market to you, or you wanted to see your own score, it’s a soft pull.
How much does a hard pull actually hurt?
Less than you probably think. Across FICO and VantageScore models, a single hard inquiry typically costs you:
- About 5 points for the average borrower, sometimes up to ~10 points if your credit file is thin or your score is already low.
- Effectively zero impact for borrowers with strong, established credit (deep file, long history, no recent applications).
On the timeline: a hard inquiry stays visible on your credit report for two years, but its impact on your score fades after about 12 months. FICO’s scoring model only counts inquiries from the last 12 months in your “new credit” component.
What does hurt more is several hard inquiries in a short period, especially if you’re applying for multiple different products (e.g. three credit cards in two weeks). Lenders read that as credit hunger.
The rate-shopping window
Both FICO and VantageScore have a built-in exception for people who are shopping for the same product. If you apply for several auto loans, mortgages, or student loans within a short window, the scoring models treat them as a single inquiry.
The windows:
- FICO models: 14–45 days, depending on the model version (newer versions are more generous at 45 days). Applies to auto, mortgage, and student loans.
- VantageScore: a flat 14 days, but applies to any product class (including credit cards).
So if you’re shopping for an auto loan and you apply at three banks within two weeks, the three hard pulls count as one for scoring purposes. The same generally does not apply to personal loans or credit cards under the FICO model — each application is its own hit.
Where Cash Rvyn fits in
Matching with Cash Rvyn does not perform any hard credit inquiry. We use a soft-inquiry approach (where any check happens at all) to filter partners by their published eligibility rules. You can see which providers might approve someone with your profile without anything hitting your credit report visibly to other lenders.
When you choose to apply with a partner, that partner’s own terms apply. Some partners (most personal loan and bad-credit loan providers) will run a hard inquiry at application; some cash advance apps run only a soft check; some run no check at all. Every partner discloses this before you submit your application — the disclosure is part of the application screen, not buried.
In short: comparing options doesn’t cost you anything on your credit. Only the application step does, and only with some partners.
The bottom line
- Soft pulls are invisible and harmless. Use them freely. Check your own credit. Get pre-qualified. Compare offers.
- Hard pulls happen at application. One costs ~5 points and fades in a year.
- Several hard pulls for the same product in a short window count as one. Use that window when shopping for an auto loan or mortgage.
- Several hard pulls for different products in a short window do real damage. Spread out personal loan or credit card applications.
- Cash Rvyn never runs a hard pull. Compare freely before deciding where to apply.