In a direct response to FICO’s recently announced direct license program, credit reporting agency Equifax will price VantageScore 4.0 mortgage credit scores at $4.50 through the end of 2027.
Equifax also announced Tuesday that free VantageScore 4.0 credit scores will be offered through the end of 2026 to all Equifax mortgage, automotive, credit card and consumer finance customers who purchase FICO scores. Additionally, the company will offer The Work Number, its employment verification service, alongside mortgage credit reports at no additional cost.
VantageScore 4.0 is a tri-bureau credit scoring model from VantageScore Solutions, an independent company jointly owned by Equifax and the other two major credit bureaus — Experian and TransUnion.
In July, Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte announced that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will allow lenders to use VantageScore 4.0 as an alternative to the Classic FICO model for loans delivered to the government-sponsored enterprises.
Last week, FICO launched a direct license program that will allow tri-merge resellers to calculate and distribute FICO scores directly to lenders, effectively bypassing the credit bureaus by letting resellers purchase scores directly from FICO.
The new FICO program has two options. The first, called the “performance model,” charges a royalty fee of $4.95 per score, plus a funded loan fee of $33 per borrower per score when the loan closes.
Alternatively, FICO noted in a press release, “lenders may opt to continue using the current per-score-only pricing model, which maintains a $10 per score fee into the tri-merge resellers.” FICO positioned that $10 figure as “the average price previously charged by credit bureaus for the FICO score.”
In the latest shot fired in the credit score wars, the Equifax press release called FICO’s new per-score-only pricing option a “monopoly-like doubling of their mortgage credit score prices to $10 in 2026.”
“Equifax is supporting U.S. consumers and our mortgage customers with 2026 VantageScore 4.0 pricing at over 50% below FICO’s aggressive 2026 $10 pricing,” Equifax CEO Mark Begor stated. “We are committed to holding the $4.50 score pricing for two years to give lenders the confidence they need to convert to the higher-performing VantageScore.”
It’s an open debate whether FICO or VantageScore has the superior credit scoring model for predicting mortgage defaults. In a sign of the growing FICO-VantageScore rivalry, the companies released competing studies in July, each claiming to best the other in predictive power.
