---
title: "What is Credit bureau? | Benefit Systems"
description: "A credit bureau is a company that collects reports from lenders, matches them to a person and passes them on as a credit report when a lender asks."
source: "aus dem gebauten HTML abgeleitet"
---
# What is Credit bureau?

A credit bureau is a company that collects reports from lenders, matches them to a person and passes them on as a credit report when a lender asks.

Also called: Credit reporting agency.

## How it works #

A credit bureau is a company rather than a public authority, and it keeps its own data. Several large bureaus operate in parallel in the US, and no lender is obliged to report to all of them. An account can therefore sit in one file and be missing from another. Anyone checking their position looks at every report rather than a single one.

## Not to be confused with #

A credit bureau is not a score vendor: the bureau supplies the data, the model turns it into a number, and the two often come from different companies.

## In German #

The German term is Auskunftei. [German version of this term](/de/glossar/auskunftei)

## Related terms #

- [Credit report](/en/glossary/credit-report): A credit report is the collection of reported credit accounts held on a person by a bureau, with limit, balance, payment status and the inquiries other lenders made.
- [Credit score](/en/glossary/credit-score): A credit score is a number a bureau uses to express how likely a person is to meet their payment obligations.

## Articles that use this term #

- [how-us-credit-reports-work](/en/knowledge/how-us-credit-reports-work)
- [fico-vs-vantagescore](/en/knowledge/fico-vs-vantagescore)
- [statement-date-vs-due-date](/en/knowledge/statement-date-vs-due-date)
- [us-business-credit-from-abroad](/en/knowledge/us-business-credit-from-abroad)
- [business-vs-personal-credit](/en/knowledge/business-vs-personal-credit)
- [itin-or-ssn-for-credit-cards](/en/knowledge/itin-or-ssn-for-credit-cards)