Does applying for many new credit accounts hurt your FICO score more than applying for just a single new account?

The short answer is yes, applying for many new accounts often hurts your FICO^® score more than applying for a single new account. There is no magic number of applications that you should limit yourself to, but in general, the fewer the better. In fact our research has shown that people who apply for credit multiple times within a short time period tend to over-extend themselves and are more likely to default at some point.

Applying for a single new credit card may have a small impact to your score, but if you apply for several credit cards, that can have a much greater effect on your score. The general idea to keep in mind is that rate shopping for home an auto loans will have less of an impact to your score than comparison shopping for credit cards or other types of credit accounts. A better practice when determining the best credit card is to read about the features of each card and then only apply for the one that has the features you want from your new card.