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A poor credit score can make qualifying for loans and credit cards difficult. But Credit Sesame’s credit monitoring service and credit builder can help improve your credit score.
This review will familiarize you with Credit Sesame’s key features, user reviews, and alternatives so you can decide if this company suits your credit needs.
Credit Sesame Overview
Credit Sesame monitors your credit report for any changes, which helps catch identity theft early. It also uses AI to grade various aspects of your credit report to help you understand how your actions affect your credit score calculations. While you can access Credit Sesame’s credit monitoring for free, it only shows you data from TransUnion.
While it’s hard to complain about a free service, Credit Sesame’s services still fall short compared to the free services on our guide to the best credit monitoring services, which monitor two credit bureaus.
Credit Sesame offers a premium subscription for $19.99 monthly. Premium Credit Sesame monitors your credit with all three credit bureaus. This service also offers credit dispute assistance, identity theft insurance, and rent reporting.
Credit Sesame also offers a credit-building Mastercard debit card through Sesame Cash, its deposit account service. This card doesn’t accrue interest and doesn’t require an up-front security deposit, but you’ll have to pay $9.99 monthly to use Sesame Cash and an additional $3 inactivity fee if you don’t use the service within a 30-day rolling period. However, you can waive these fees with qualifying account activity.
While having these services under the same subscription service is convenient, Credit Sesame doesn’t perform them particularly well. Its rent reporting feature only reports to TransUnion and Equifax. Its credit dispute service, while personalized, only offers assistance with disputes; it doesn’t actually dispute anything on your behalf. While identity theft insurance is nice to have, it comes standard with most identity theft protection services.
While the debit card is another great convenience, provided you’re willing to pay $9.99 monthly, there are cheaper options among the best credit builder accounts.
Credit Sesame Account Options
Credit Sesame Key Features
Credit Sesame offers credit monitoring, credit building, and other financial services.
Credit monitoring
With a Credit Sesame account, you’ll get a free credit report summary and credit score, which refreshes daily. It also notifies you of changes on your credit file so that you can track suspicious activity.
Credit Sesame assigns a letter grade for each credit factor on your credit report summary. This feature makes it easier to understand which parts of your credit profile need improvement. The downside is that Credit Sesame only pulls your credit report from TransUnion— not Equifax or Experian. So, you may be missing out on crucial credit information from the other credit bureaus.
Sesame Cash Credit Builder
Sesame Cash is an optional add-on to the base free plan that functions as both a Mastercard debit card and a credit-building tool.
Credit Sesame sets aside a matching amount in a virtual secured account as you make purchases on your debit card. It also sets aside a security deposit from your Sesame Cash account funds. Each month, your security deposit pays off the balance on your virtual secured account. Credit Sesame reports these as positive payments to the three major credit bureaus, building your credit history and potentially boosting your credit score.
Unlike a secured credit card, your Sesame Cash account doesn’t require a security deposit or have a credit limit. But you’ll need to pay a $9.99 monthly fee, which you can waive by completing qualifying activities.
Credit Sesame offers the same protections and security measures as reputable banks. For example, Sesame Cash is FDIC-insured. This means the government will protect your account up to $250,000 if the bank goes bankrupt.
Credit Sesame Rent Reporting
Credit Sesame offers a rent reporting service, which reports your monthly rent payments to the credit bureaus to build payment history. Credit Sesame’s rent reporting service can report up to 24 months of prior rent payments, which is a great perk also found among some of the best rent reporting services. Unfortunately, Credit Sesame doesn’t report rent payments to Experian, one of the three major credit bureaus, severely limiting its credit-building potential.
Credit Sesame Dispute Resolution
Credit Sesame’s dispute resolution will assign you an expert who helps you go through the steps of disputing your credit. However, you are ultimately responsible for filing disputes with the credit bureaus.
Credit Sesame’s dispute resolution should not be confused for a credit repair service as it does not send any disputes on your behalf. You can find our guide on the best credit repair services here.
Other features
Depending on which plan you buy, Credit Sesame offers these non-credit-related services:
Quote comparisons — Compare prices from loan, insurance, and credit card companies. Identity theft insurance — Get up to $1 million in identity theft insurance coverage.Identity monitoring services — Receive alerts for suspicious activity related to your identity. 24/7 live assistance — Work with a live representative to cancel and reissue your lost or stolen cards.
Is Credit Sesame Free?
Credit Sesame offers free credit monitoring from TransUnion. If you want monitoring from all credit agencies, you’ll have to upgrade to Credit Sesame Premium, which costs $19.99 monthly. Credit Sesame’s Platinum Protection plan also offers various identity theft protection services like dark web and social security number monitoring.
Credit Sesame’s Mastercard debit card, Sesame Cash, costs $9.99 monthly with an additional $3 inactivity fee if you don’t use the card within a 30-day period. However, Credit Sesame waives the monthly fee if you spend more than $1,000 monthly with Sesame Cash or deposit at least $500 into your account.
How to Sign Up for Credit Sesame
The sign-up process for Credit Sesame’s free service is pretty straightforward.
Visit https://www.creditsesame.com/ or download the app. Click “Sign up” on the top right corner.Complete the application, which asks for your email address, legal name, date of birth, home address, phone number, and the last four digits of your Social Security number.
Once you establish your free account, you can sign up for its paid services like Sesame Cash or Credit Sesame Premium.
Note: Credit Sesame offers a seven-day free trial for its premium subscription.
Credit Sesame Reviews: What Users Are Saying
Speaking generally, Credit Sesame is poorly reviewed by customers. It averages 1.8 stars out of five across 2,107 reviews on its Trustpilot page and 1.23 stars out of five on its Better Business Bureau page. Negative reviews often cited issues with customer service. For instance, many users mentioned difficulty contacting a representative to resolve their issues.
However, its app fares better, receiving an average rating of 4.8 stars out of five across 374,000 reviews on the Apple App Store and 4.7 stars across 151,000 on the Google Play store. Positive responses from app users for its effectiveness and ease of use.
Credit Sesame vs. The Competition
Credit Sesame vs. Credit Karma
Credit Sesame and Credit Karma both offer free credit monitoring. But Credit Karma offers free credit monitoring from both Equifax and TransUnion. Also, you can get identity monitoring and alerts at no extra cost.
With Credit Karma, you can also set up a credit builder. But unlike Credit Sesame, you can improve your credit score by transferring money into a savings account. You can only spend that money once your savings balance reaches $500.
You can read our Credit Karma review here.
Credit Sesame vs. Capital One CreditWise
CreditWise is a credit monitoring service that tracks activity on your TransUnion and Experian reports, while Credit Sesame just tracks TransUnion. CreditWise also offers other identity monitoring services (i.e., Social Security number monitoring and dark web monitoring).
You can read our CreditWise review here.
Credit Sesame Review Frequently Asked Questions
Is Credit Sesame accurate?
Credit Sesame’s free account only uses data from TransUnion. Reviewing your credit activity from all three bureaus is essential to get a complete picture of your credit file.
Can Credit Sesame be trusted?
Yes. Credit Sesame is trusted with data from TransUnion, a major credit bureau. The company is also FDIC-insured and uses data encryption to protect your information.
Which is better: Credit Karma or Credit Sesame?
It depends. If you’re looking for a free credit monitoring service, Credit Karma shows credit data from TransUnion and Equifax. On the other hand, Credit Sesame offers a credit builder that lets you build your credit score from purchases made on your debit card.
What kind of credit score does Credit Sesame use?
Credit Sesame uses your TransUnion credit report and your VantageScore 3.0 credit score.