When you apply for a personal loan, lenders check your FICO score through consumer bureaus like Equifax, Experian, or TransUnion. Apply for commercial financing with your EIN, and the game changes entirely โ here's your definitive guide to the "Big Three" business credit bureaus.
A note on terminology used on this page: BCC Supplies does not lend money. A BCC Supplies membership is a commercial installment contract, reported to the business credit bureaus as a commercial installment tradeline โ some pages also describe this as an "installment loan" in a descriptive sense, not a cash loan from a lender. See how this is structured โ
Dun & Bradstreet is the oldest and most widely recognized commercial credit bureau in the world. Whether you're trying to secure vendor terms, government contracts, or startup funding, your D&B file is usually the first place underwriters look.
Before D&B can track your business, you must obtain a Data Universal Numbering System (D-U-N-S) Number โ a unique nine-digit identifier for your business. It's free to request through the D&B website, and it acts as the anchor for your entire business credit profile.
D&B issues several risk ratings, but the most important is the PAYDEX score. It ranges from 1 to 100 and measures one specific metric: how quickly your business pays its bills.
1โ49: payments consistently 30+ days late. 50โ79: payments 1โ30 days late. 80: payments made exactly on time. 81โ100: payments made before the due date. Dun & Bradstreet's own published methodology confirms this exact scale.[1]
How to conquer D&B: to generate a PAYDEX score, you typically need at least three active trade references reporting to your file.
Our $19/mo Foundation Plan reports your commercial installment tradeline directly to Dun & Bradstreet every month, establishing your profile and pushing your PAYDEX score toward that critical 80+ benchmark.
While D&B focuses heavily on how you pay your vendors, Experian Business looks at the broader financial health and legal risk of your entity. It operates completely separately from the Experian consumer bureau โ your personal credit is not mixed in.
Experian's primary scoring model is the Intelliscore Plus, which also ranges from 1 to 100. Unlike the PAYDEX score, which is purely payment-based, the Intelliscore is a highly predictive risk model. Experian calculates it by analyzing:
1โ10: high risk. 11โ50: medium-high risk. 51โ75: medium-low risk. 76โ100: low risk (prime fundability). Experian's own guidance confirms this 1โ100 range directly, and notes that โ unlike a personal credit score โ your business credit score is publicly viewable by potential lenders, partners, or competitors at any time.[2]
How to conquer Experian Business: Experian heavily rewards businesses that can manage structured corporate debt and maintain low utilization.
Upgrading to our $39/mo Momentum Plan unlocks automatic monthly reporting to Experian Business. By reporting a high-credit installment limit and paying it down on time, you feed Experian the exact data its algorithm rewards.
Equifax Business is the third major player in commercial credit. It's heavily utilized by traditional banks and commercial lenders when assessing applications for large cash loans, SBA loans, or heavy equipment financing.
Equifax issues several specific scores, rather than just one unified number:
| Score | Range | What it predicts |
|---|---|---|
| Business Payment Index | 0โ100 | Historical payment performance, similar to PAYDEX |
| Business Credit Risk Score | 101โ992 | Likelihood of 90+ days delinquent in the next 12 months |
| Business Failure Score | 1000โ1610 | Likelihood of filing for bankruptcy in the next year |
How to conquer Equifax Business: Equifax favors businesses with deep, diverse credit files that include both vendor terms and commercial installment loans.
Note: some secondary sources cite a wider Business Failure Score range (up to 1,880); we've confirmed the range above against SCORE, an SBA-affiliated nonprofit resource partner.[3]
Building credit manually means opening multiple accounts, tracking different invoices, and hoping your vendors actually report your payments to the bureaus.
BCC Supplies puts this process on autopilot. We engineered a zero-interest commercial installment contract designed specifically to build your business credit file:
What about TransUnion? TransUnion is one of the three major bureaus for personal credit, but it isn't part of the "Big Three" for U.S. business credit the way Dun & Bradstreet, Experian Business, and Equifax Small Business are. TransUnion does offer a dedicated business credit report in Canada, but in the United States its core reporting business remains consumer-focused โ so U.S. lenders pulling a commercial file are checking D&B, Experian Business, or Equifax, not a TransUnion business score.
There's a fourth data source feeding these bureaus you won't see mentioned much: the SBFE. The Small Business Financial Exchange isn't a bureau itself โ it's a trade association where member banks and card issuers report your payment history, which then flows into the D&B, Experian, and Equifax files above. You can't check it directly or join it as a business owner. See our full breakdown of how the SBFE works โ
One commercial installment tradeline, reported to all three major bureaus, on autopilot.
Get started with BCC Supplies for $19/moUnderstanding the Big Three is the first step โ reporting to them consistently is what actually moves your score. See exactly what gets reported each cycle, learn what a PAYDEX score means for your timeline in our deep dive on D&B, or compare Foundation, Momentum, and VIP plans to find the right starting point.
Sources: [1] Dun & Bradstreet, "Business Credit Scores and Ratings" · [2] Experian, "Understanding Your Business Credit Score" · [3] SCORE, "Understanding the Three Major Business Credit Bureaus"
See our Press Founder Questions Editorial Standards for how we research, source, and correct the information on this page.
There's no single "most important" bureau โ Dun & Bradstreet, Experian Business, and Equifax use different data and different scoring models, and different lenders pull from different bureaus. The safest approach is a tradeline that reports to all three.
D&B, Experian Business, and Equifax all offer some free account-level access to view your file, though full detailed reports typically require a paid subscription with each bureau directly.
Once a tradeline starts reporting, most bureaus need at least one to two reporting cycles (roughly 30-60 days) of payment history before a score generates, and several months of consistent on-time payments to stabilize into a strong range.
Get started