Its 'pre-approved' offers are ranked by who pays Intuit most, and the FTC fined it for the rest.
What it's really for A free-credit-score app that monetizes by routing you to the lenders paying it most.
What our grade covers The grade on this page is about its personalized card and loan picks and 'approval odds', not everything the site does.
High Scoring Confidence Checked against primary sources. We are confident in the facts and the grade here.
By Credit Karma's own disclosure the advertiser compensation it receives "is one of several factors that may impact how and where offers appear (including the order in which they appear)," and it is paid referral/affiliate commissions by the very lenders whose cards and loans it ranks and recommends, so the parties paying the most are the financial institutions it places highest.
Source →- Operating since
- 2007 (19 years) · source
- What it costs you
- Free to read The reviews are free to read.
- How they make money
- It is a lead-generation/affiliate platform: it offers free credit scores and monitoring, then earns referral commissions from lenders and banks (and advertiser compensation) when users sign up for the credit cards and loans it recommends.
- What they do
- It produces personalized recommendations and rankings of credit cards, loans, and other financial products, paired with "approval odds" estimates of how likely a given user is to be approved.
- What to watch for
- The offers shown at the top are influenced by which lenders pay Credit Karma the most, not by which product is genuinely best for you, and its "pre-approved"/approval-odds claims are not guarantees (the FTC fined it $3M because many "pre-approved" users were ultimately denied).
- Composite score
- 1.10 / 5.00 → grade D- (pay-to-rank cap applied)
- Last verified
- June 2, 2026 — when we last checked this entry's facts, links, and grade against the live site.
- Site confirmed live
- July 11, 2026 — our monthly automated check reached Credit Karma and got a normal response.
How the grade was reached
Does the site take money from the very entities it ranks? Pay-for-placement, vendor-funded data, and affiliate commissions all pull this down. The less the ranking can be bought, the higher the score.
What is the ranking actually built on? Hands-on testing scores highest, then verified first-hand reviews, then opinion or popularity surveys and self-reported figures, then pay-to-rank, which scores lowest.
Is the methodology published, specific, and reproducible? Can a reader see how a given rank was reached, or is it a black box?
Are commercial relationships, sponsorships, and affiliate arrangements disclosed clearly and near the rankings themselves, rather than buried?
How hard is it to game? Controls against fake reviews, solicited reviews, and vendor gaming raise this; an open box anyone can stuff lowers it.
Evidence
- Credit Karma launched in 2007 by Kenneth Lin, Ryan Graciano, and Nichole Mustard; the website went live in February 2008. Intuit acquired Credit Karma in December 2020 for approximately $7.1 billion, making it a brand of Intuit. Source: Wikipedia: Credit Karma →
- Per Credit Karma's own disclosures, it receives compensation from third-party advertisers whose offers appear on the site, and 'except for mortgage loan offers, this compensation is one of several factors that may impact how and where offers appear (including the order in which they appear).' It makes money via affiliate/referral fees paid by lenders and banks when users sign up for products it recommends. Source: Credit Karma personal loan partner disclosures / 'Is Credit Karma a scam?' →
- The FTC charged that between 2018 and 2021 Credit Karma told consumers they were 'pre-approved' or had '90% odds' of approval for credit cards and loans from lenders that promoted their products on the site; nearly a third of those 'pre-approved' applicants were denied. The finalized order required Credit Karma to pay $3 million and stop the deceptive claims. Source: FTC: $3 million settlement disapproves of Credit Karma's deceptive 'pre-approved' claims →