If you’ve ever tried to get your credit score for free, you know that there’s no such thing as a truly free credit score. You’re forced to enter your credit card information and sign up for a free trial of a service, just so you can forget to cancel and get charged for a service you don’t want. Though you can get a free credit report easily with no credit card, one popular website, Credit Karma, allows you to retrieve your credit score without providing any payment information.

Discover started including customers’ FICO scores on monthly bills and on online accounts in early 2014. According to FICO numbers quoted by Discover, 87 percent of consumers’ credit scores fluctuate from month to month, with changes of as much as 20 points. These monthly credit scores can help customers receive real-time notification of any changes that could signal an error or abuse of their credit.

Wells Fargo has a limited-time offer for customers where they’ll give you a free credit score and free credit report through November 16, 2014. Unfortunately, the score you get is not your real FICO score. It is a made up score calculated with the bank’s own proprietary scoring model.

Your credit score report can be affect by more than your available credit history. We talk about how credit cards, mortgages, car loans, and any type of loan that reports to all 3 credit bureaus will affect your credit score. We don’t always talk about utility companies and how they can have a negative impact on your credit report. Here are utility companies I like to consider non-creditors. In other words these companies don’t give you a line credit, they just provide a service.

Citi Free Credit Score will become the largest credit card issuer to provide free credit scores to their credit card customers. The bank will begin providing these scores on a monthly basis beginning in January 2015 and the scores will only be available online. Citi will provide the FICO credit score which is based on credit report information from Equifax.