Your business credit score: what lenders see, and how to check it without paying

Alex BeardsleyFounder & Director

|Updated September 2026

There is no such thing as “the” business credit score. Experian, Creditsafe, Dun & Bradstreet and Equifax each run their own, on different scales, from overlapping but not identical data. A lender may use one of them, or none. Most of the alternative lenders we place business with lean far harder on your bank statements than on any bureau number. So this page does two jobs: it explains what the scores measure, and it is honest about how much they decide.

We do not run a credit checker here, and we would be wary of any broker site that does. Your company's data belongs on the bureaus' own sites, where you can see it free (details below), not in a lead form.

The two scales you will meet most

Both Experian and Creditsafe score limited companies from 0 to 100, low number for high risk. The bands are not the same, so a “60” means something different on each.

Experian says a score above 80 is “typically considered excellent”, that most lenders want to see above 40, and that between 40 and 80 a lender may ask for more information. Creditsafe describes its score as the likelihood a company's payments become seriously delinquent, meaning 90 days or more beyond terms, or the company fails within twelve months. Dun & Bradstreet's PAYDEX is a supplier payment measure on the same 1 to 100 scale where 80 means paid within terms and anything above 80 means early; it matters more for trade credit than for a loan.

What actually moves the number

Experian names four inputs to a company score: company accounts, payment performance, director information and consumer scores. In May 2026 it added that “payment behaviour and filing history now carry greater weight than they did previously”. Creditsafe names balance sheet, cash flow, payment history and company age, and builds its reports from CCJs, trade payment data and director and shareholder details. In practice four things do most of the damage.

Accounts filed late, or not at all

Both bureaus list late filing as a negative signal and neither publishes a points penalty for it. Companies House does publish the fines for a private company: £150 up to a month late, £375 up to three months, £750 up to six, £1,500 beyond six, and the penalty doubles if you are late two years in a row. The score damage usually costs more than the fine, because a lender reading “accounts overdue” reads it the way Experian describes: as a possible sign of financial difficulty.

County Court Judgments

A CCJ sits on the Register of Judgments, Orders and Fines, run by Registry Trust, for six years. Pay it within one calendar month of the judgment date and, once the court notifies Registry Trust, it comes off the public register entirely. Pay it later and it stays for the six years marked as satisfied, which you apply for on form N443 with proof of payment. That one-month window is the single most valuable date on this page. A satisfied CCJ is survivable with most of the lenders on our panel; an unsatisfied one is a decline almost everywhere.

Paying suppliers beyond terms

Days Beyond Terms, or DBT, is the average number of days a business pays its suppliers after the invoice due date, with zero meaning on time. Suppliers that share ledger data with the bureaus feed it. Creditsafe calls its exact method commercially sensitive, so nobody outside can tell you the weighting, only the direction: the longer past due, the lower the score.

The directors' own files

Experian counts consumer scores among the inputs to a company score, and once a personal guarantee is on the table the directors' personal credit is assessed in its own right. Funding Circle's introducer criteria put it plainly: no significant adverse credit event against shareholding directors, and directors involved with a liquidated business where creditors lost out within the last six years “will be a challenge”. A clean company with a director carrying a recent default is, to a lender, not a clean company.

What alternative lenders check instead

This is the part the bureau guides leave out. The fast lenders underwrite mostly from bank data, and they say so. iwoca: “For most of our applications we check bank statements and VAT returns.” It runs quotation searches that leave a soft footprint, links to Lloyds, Barclays, HSBC, Xero, Amazon, PayPal and Sage Pay, and asks limited companies for a personal guarantee, typically from a director. Funding Circle wants business bank statements for up to the last eight months and your latest full accounts, and its hard search appears only if you accept the loan. YouLend's FAQ says it uses Open Banking to access payment data and generate offers; it does not publish its stance on credit checks or guarantees, and we will not guess at it here.

The consequence is uncomfortable but useful: a business can carry a respectable Experian score and still be declined on six months of statements showing returned direct debits, gambling transactions or a balance that touches zero every month. In the deals we arrange, statement conduct decides more outcomes than the bureau number does. Fix the statements first.

How to see your own score without paying

One caution on the Experian trial: several guides say ninety days. Experian's own sign-up page says two months. Set a reminder for the day before it ends.

A checklist that follows the evidence

Everything below traces to a bureau page, a court register or a lender FAQ quoted above. Nothing here requires a paid service.

1. Pull your own report from one of the free routes above and read every line, not just the number.
2. Check Companies House for anything overdue. File it this week; the penalty clock and the score both run from the due date.
3. Search the Registry Trust register for judgments against the company and each director. Pay any CCJ inside its one-month window if you still can; apply on N443 for satisfied status if you cannot.
4. Look at the last six months of business bank statements the way an underwriter would: returned items, days at or below zero, unexplained cash withdrawals, gambling merchants.
5. Pay the suppliers that report to bureaus within terms first. You will not know which ones do, so treat all of them as if they do.
6. Ask each director to check their personal file for defaults or arrangements before any personal guarantee is offered.
7. Where a lender says a hard search only lands on acceptance, take them at their word and compare offers before accepting one. Where a lender does not say, ask before you apply.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. Experian, Commercial Delphi score guide
2. Experian, what is a business credit score (August 2026)
3. Experian, poor business credit score (May 2026)
4. Experian, Days Beyond Terms
5. Experian My Business Profile, trial terms
6. Creditsafe, what is a business credit score
7. Creditsafe, company credit report guide
8. Creditsafe, how the score is calculated
9. Dun & Bradstreet, PAYDEX factsheet
10. Capitalise, business credit score and plans
11. Registry Trust, CCJs in England and Wales
12. GOV.UK, penalties for late filing of accounts
13. iwoca, FAQ
14. Funding Circle, small business loans and introducer factsheet
15. Funding Circle, will a business loan affect my personal credit
16. YouLend, FAQ