Early fraud detection services that provide the best credit monitoring.

The prices of the services listed are current at the time of printing.

By monitoring your credit report, credit monitoring services can alert you to any suspicious activity, allowing you to take prompt action to safeguard your personal information. Although these services cannot prevent identity theft, they can provide you with timely information so that you can take action if you detect any fraudulent activity.

It is difficult for individuals to monitor their public records and the various services that track their information on the dark web.

Two types of credit monitoring services are available: basic and premium. Basic services are free and don't require a credit card upon sign-up, while premium services cost between $8.99 and $39.95 per month. Choosing between free and paid credit monitoring services involves a trade-off between selecting a basic service with limited coverage or a premium service with comprehensive protection.

Consider if you qualify for a free credit monitoring program before paying for a service. Due to several settlements from high-profile data breaches, millions of Americans have access to free credit monitoring services. If you were affected by a data breach, you can submit a claim for free credit monitoring through the company's settlement website.

CNBC Select evaluated and compared 12 credit monitoring services that offer various free and premium plans with varying levels of credit protection based on specific features. (Read about our evaluation process.)

Credit monitoring services can notify you of any changes to your credit file and help you correct errors, but it's crucial to remain vigilant and take proactive measures to prevent identity theft.

CNBC Select evaluates the top six credit monitoring services that enable you to monitor your credit and receive notifications on any suspicious activity.

Best free credit monitoring services

• Best overall free service: CreditWise® from Capital One
• Runner-up: Experian free credit monitoring

Best paid credit monitoring services

• Best overall paid service: IdentityForce®
• Runner-up: Privacy Guard™
• Best for families: Experian IdentityWorks℠
• Best for most accurate credit score: FICO® Advanced

Best free credit monitoring services

If you don't want to pay for a credit monitoring service, you can explore these free alternatives. Although free services offer regular credit score updates, they do not provide triple-bureau credit monitoring and identity theft insurance, among other premium features.

Best overall free service

What is CreditWise® from Capital One? It's a free credit monitoring service that doesn't require a credit card number to sign up and offers a range of features.

Anyone can access CreditWise features, which are integrated into the Capital One mobile app for Capital One cardholders.

TransUnion provides consumers with weekly updated VantageScore credit scores and real-time credit report updates from both TransUnion and Experian. Unlike other free services, CreditWise offers unique features such as dark web scanning and social security number tracking.

You can use a credit score simulator to determine how different actions, such as paying off debt or closing a credit card, may affect your credit score.

Runner-up

This free credit monitoring service from Experian is a great no-cost alternative that allows you to sign up without providing a credit card number and offers helpful features similar to those found in the premium Experian IdentityWorks℠ plans.

You will receive real-time alerts about new inquiries and accounts opened in your name, changes to your personal information, and suspicious activity detected on your Experian credit report. Additionally, users will receive an updated Experian credit report and FICO credit score every 30 days with this service.

Experian's free service does not provide regular dark web scans, which is why it ranks second. Upon signing up, you receive a one-time dark web surveillance report that searches over 600,000 web pages for your social security number, email, or phone number.

Experian Boost® can help increase your FICO® Score by adding positive payments for phone and utility bills to your credit file.

Best paid credit monitoring services

If you require a more comprehensive credit monitoring plan, you may want to consider one of the paid options. These plans offer triple-bureau credit monitoring, extensive fraud alerts, and identity theft insurance up to $1 million, which are not available with free plans.

Best overall paid service

Who is the target audience for IdentityForce® UltraSecure and UltraSecure+Credit, which provide the most comprehensive security features that monitor your information across multiple sites and services, including the dark web, court records, and social media (checks for inappropriate activity on sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter)?

Your bank, credit card, investment accounts, medical ID, social security number, and address are monitored for potential fraud, and consumers receive alerts accordingly.

Choose UltraSecure+Credit for a comprehensive credit monitoring and identity protection service that includes three-bureau credit monitoring and score updates. Additionally, you can monitor how your score changes over time and simulate the impact of different actions on your score (though some free services, such as CreditWise, also offer this feature).

Runner-up

PrivacyGuard™ offers comprehensive coverage with alerts from all three credit bureaus and monthly credit score and report updates, but falls slightly behind IdentityForce due to the higher cost of plans.

You can try PrivacyGuard's service for $1 for 14 days, and the fee will depend on the plan you select after that.

The Basic PrivacyGuard® Identity Protection plan costs $9.99 per month and includes $1 million identity theft insurance, public and dark web scanning and monitoring for various personal details, such as your social security number, debit and credit card numbers, and full name. However, this plan does not monitor your credit report.

If you want daily triple-bureau credit monitoring, monthly credit score and credit report tracking, and identity theft insurance, you should opt for the mid-tier PrivacyGuard® Credit Protection, which costs $19.99 per month. However, this plan doesn't offer public and dark web scanning.

The most expensive plan, PrivacyGuard® Total Protection, is priced at $24.99 per month and offers a discount of approximately $5 by combining the Identity and Credit plans.

Best for families

Parents seeking a comprehensive credit monitoring service for their entire family should consider Experian IdentityWorks℠. These plans, which cover one or two adults and up to 10 children, are the most comprehensive for tracking family credit.

Experian provides two plans: IdentityWorks℠ Plus and IdentityWorks℠ Premium. Both plans include dark web surveillance, social security number and change of address alerts, and identity theft insurance ($500,000 for Plus and $1 million for Premium).

The Plus plan includes credit monitoring for your Experian credit report, while the Premium plan offers triple-bureau monitoring for an additional $10.

The cost for one adult and up to 10 children is $14.99 for Plus or $24.99 for Premium. If there are two adults and up to 10 children, the cost is $19.99 for Plus or $29.99 for Premium. Alternatively, if you don't have a family plan, you can take out a plan for one adult with a 30-day free trial, followed by $9.99 for Plus or $19.99 for Premium.

Best for most accurate credit score

What are these services for? FICO scores are used in over 90% of lending decisions, making FICO® Basic, Advanced and Premier services the most accurate for credit score updates. All plans provide access to 28 versions of your FICO score, including scores for credit cards, mortgages, and auto loans. Additionally, you'll receive $1 million identity theft insurance and 24/7 access to U.S.-based identity theft experts who can help restore your identity if your information is compromised.

The differences between the plans lie in the number of credit reports monitored and the activities tracked. The Basic plan monitors your credit at Experian and keeps track of new account inquiries and openings, balance changes of $1 or greater, changes in account status, utilization rate exceeding 75%, and a few other credit-related actions.

The Advanced and Premier credit monitoring services review reports from all three bureaus and include additional factors such as changes to the name on your Equifax report, new employment listed on your TransUnion report, and fraud alerts placed on your TransUnion report.

The three-bureau coverage and identity-monitoring protection that detects threats to personal information on the dark web are what make the more expensive plans worthwhile. Additionally, the main difference between Advanced and Premier plans is the frequency of credit report updates (quarterly versus monthly, respectively).

The three most expensive plans on the list are Basic at $19.95 per month, Advanced at $29.95 per month, and Premier at $39.95 per month.

Why trust CNBC Select?

Our mission at CNBC Select is to deliver top-notch service journalism and in-depth consumer advice to our readers, enabling them to make well-informed decisions when it comes to their finances. Each credit monitoring service review we publish is the result of thorough reporting by our team of expert writers and editors, who possess extensive knowledge of credit monitoring products. At CNBC Select, we are committed to maintaining our journalistic standards and ethics, even when it comes to earning a commission from affiliate partners on many offers and links. Our methodology outlines the process we use to select the best credit monitoring services, which are based on rigorous research and testing.

Our methodology

CNBC Select evaluated and compared 12 credit monitoring services, considering both free and paid plans, to determine which ones provide the greatest benefits to consumers.

We prioritized the following features when evaluating the top free credit monitoring services.

• Services that monitor credit reports from multiple credit bureaus were ranked higher because it is uncommon for free services to monitor multiple reports.
• The majority of free credit scoring services use VantageScore, while lenders rely on FICO Scores in about 90% of their lending decisions.
• The ranking of a dark web scanning service is higher if it checks for personal information such as your name, social security number, address, and other data.

We prioritized the following features when evaluating the top-rated paid credit monitoring services.

• Services with lower costs and greater benefits received higher ratings in our reviews.
• Credit reports from all three bureaus, Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion, were ranked higher because they provide more comprehensive coverage.
• Since lenders rely more on FICO Scores than VantageScores when making lending decisions, services that provide FICO Scores were ranked higher.
• Monitoring personal information on the dark web is difficult since it's not easily accessible.
• We evaluated the effectiveness of identity theft insurance services and examined the coverage limit. Our research revealed that the top services provide up to $1 million in coverage for eligible expenses related to resolving and restoring your identity.

Credit monitoring services can only notify you of any changes to your credit report, not correct or prevent any mistakes.

To learn more about IdentityForce®, visit its website.

Not all lenders use Experian credit files or scores, and some may not see improved scores or approval odds.