What Is the Average UK Credit Score, and Why Nobody Can Tell You

This guide explains why the "average UK credit score" is not a single figure, and what to compare yourself against instead. It is not financial advice.

The question sounds like it should have an answer. It does not, and the reason is structural rather than a gap in the data.

There is no national credit score in the United Kingdom. Three credit reference agencies — Experian, Equifax and TransUnion — each run their own model on their own scale, from their own data. An average can be computed within each of those populations, but the three numbers are not measuring the same thing and cannot be averaged together.

Then there is the practical problem: none of the three publishes an official, dated national average on a regular cycle. The figures circulating online are a mix of press mentions, marketing pages and secondary write-ups, often years old, and at least one of them is quoted on a scale that no longer exists.

• There is no official UK average credit score, and no single number that spans the three agencies.
• The scales differ: Experian runs to 1,250, Equifax to 1,000, TransUnion to 710. A score of 700 is excellent at one agency and middling at another, as our guide to credit score ranges sets out.
• Widely repeated averages — around 797 for Experian, in the 600s for TransUnion, and figures ranging from the high 300s to the mid 600s for Equifax — come from different years and, in Experian's case, from the 0–999 scale replaced in late 2025. They are not comparable with each other or with a score you check today.
• The useful comparison is not the average. It is which band you sit in on your own agency's scale, because that is the shape of the information lenders actually use.

Figures cited here reflect commonly published claims as at September 2026 and are not official agency statistics.

Experian moved its consumer score from a 0–999 range to 0–1,250 in late 2025, with the rollout beginning in Autumn 2025.

The commonly quoted "average Experian score of 797" belongs to the old 0–999 scale. On the new range, 797 does not mean what it used to mean — the recalibration changed both the ceiling and the band boundaries, so the old figure cannot simply be scaled up.

Any page still presenting 797 out of 999 as the current UK average is describing a scale that has been retired. Our guide on why scores differ between apps covers the practical fallout of that change.

The same person can hold three scores that look wildly different and describe an identical credit history. The bands, not the digits, carry the meaning.

This is also why "average" is a slippery idea even within one agency. A distribution that clusters heavily in the upper bands has a mean that sits well above the midpoint of the scale — so being "below average" is not the same as being in a poor band, and being average is not the same as scoring 500 out of 1,000.

Nothing on this page is the number a lender sees. Lenders do not buy your consumer score. They buy the underlying data and run their own scorecard, calibrated to their own book and their own appetite at that moment — the process explained in which score lenders use.

That has two consequences for anyone benchmarking themselves against an average:

A lender's cut-off is not a national one. The same file can pass one lender's scorecard and fail another's in the same week. There is no threshold that "average" clears.

Affordability sits outside the score entirely. Income, committed expenditure and existing debt are assessed separately, which is why applicants with strong scores are declined every day — see affordability versus credit score.

Three questions tell you more than any national figure:

1. Which band am I in, on the scale I am looking at? Band position is the only comparison that survives the difference between agencies.
2. Is it moving in the right direction? Your own score three and six months ago is a far better benchmark than a stranger's average, and it responds to things you control.
3. Do all three files agree? Lenders do not all report to all three agencies. A default or an account missing from one file changes the score at that agency only, which is why checking all three is worth the effort — our guide on getting your free statutory report from all three CRAs sets out how.

If the goal behind the question is "am I normal?", the honest answer is that most UK adults with an established file sit in the middle-to-upper bands of whichever scale they look at, and the specific number matters far less than whether the file contains defaults, late payments or a judgment.

Looking for more on this topic? Browse all our credit score guides.

This guide draws on the following official and regulatory sources:

• Information Commissioner's Office
• FCA Handbook — CONC (Consumer Credit sourcebook)
• Data Protection Act 2018
• Consumer Credit Act 1974

Free, impartial money guidance is available from MoneyHelper, the government-backed service run by the Money and Pensions Service.

Related: What Is a Credit Score Range in the UK | Why Your Credit Score Differs Between Apps | All credit score guides.