How business credit scores actually work

Once you register an entity, get an EIN, and open accounts in the business name, the credit bureaus start building a file tied to the business rather than to you personally. The three commercial bureaus are Dun & Bradstreet, Experian, and Equifax. They do not share data, so your business can look strong at one bureau and thin at another depending on which vendors and lenders report.

A business file is built from trade lines (vendors and suppliers who extend terms), loans and cards in the business name, public records like liens and judgments, and firmographic data such as industry, years in business, and size.

PAYDEX is the D&B payment score. It runs from 1 to 100 and is based purely on whether you pay suppliers on time. A PAYDEX of 80 means you pay on the agreed terms; scores above 80 mean you pay early, and below 80 means you pay late. To have a PAYDEX at all you need a D-U-N-S number and at least a few vendors reporting to D&B.

Because it is payment-history only, PAYDEX is the score you can move fastest. Pay early on a handful of reporting net-30 accounts and it climbs.

The Experian business score is Intelliscore Plus, on a 1 to 100 scale where higher means lower risk. It blends payment history with credit utilization, public records, and business demographics, so it behaves more like a full risk model than PAYDEX does.

Equifax reports a payment index from 0 to 100 alongside two separate risk models, a business credit risk score and a business failure score. Different lenders weight these differently, which is why "my business credit score" is never a single number.

The FICO Small Business Scoring Service, or SBSS, is the score most banks and the SBA use for smaller loan decisions. It runs from 0 to 300 and blends business credit data, the owner personal credit, and business financials into one number.

The SBA uses SBSS to pre-screen its 7(a) small loans, meaning loans of $500,000 and under. An application that falls below the SBA minimum is not auto-declined; it is routed to full manual underwriting instead. Because SBSS pulls in your personal credit, a thin business file can be offset by strong personal credit, and the reverse is also true.

Early on, almost every lender and card issuer still checks your personal credit and asks for a personal guarantee, because the business file is too thin to stand alone. As the business builds its own history, more of the decision shifts onto the business file, and eventually some lenders and net-terms vendors will extend credit on the EIN alone.

The practical takeaway is to build both. Keep personal utilization low, and get vendors and a business card reporting to the commercial bureaus so the business file thickens.