How Does Upstart Relay Monitor Your Credit Score?

Relay pulls the core tradelines that most lenders use to gauge risk: revolving-card balances and payment history, installment-loan status (including any missed or late payments), recent hard inquiries, and any public-record entries such as bankruptcies or tax liens. From those data points it calculates a refreshed score and flags notable shifts-like a new delinquency or a sudden spike in utilization-that could affect future loan decisions.

What Relay does not see are the peripheral details buried in a credit file: personal identifiers, closed accounts older than seven years, or the narrative notes a lender might add. It also skips any information hidden behind a credit freeze unless you temporarily lift it. In short, Relay monitors the active, risk-relevant elements of your credit report that directly influence scoring models, while leaving the broader background data untouched.

Upstart Relay checks your credit score with a soft inquiry, meaning it does not affect the score you see on your credit report and lenders won't see the check listed on your file. The only time a hard pull occurs is during the initial loan application, when Upstart needs to verify eligibility and calculate an offer; after you're enrolled in Relay, all subsequent monitoring actions remain soft pulls.

• Soft pull: used for ongoing score refreshes, alerts, and the "watch-list" view in Relay
• Hard pull: performed once, at underwriting, to generate a definitive loan decision
• No impact on your credit score from Relay's regular monitoring activities.

When you apply for a loan through Upstart, Relay performs a single hard pull of your credit file as part of the underwriting workflow. That pull captures the current credit score, the list of tradelines, and any recent activity that lenders consider when deciding your eligibility.

1. Application submission - As soon as you submit your personal and financial details, Relay sends a request to the major credit bureaus for a fresh report.
2. Bureau response - The bureaus return a snapshot of your credit data, which includes the numeric score used for the decision and the accompanying report showing open accounts, payment history, and public records.
3. Score evaluation - Upstart's underwriting engine compares the retrieved score against its internal thresholds. If the score meets or exceeds the required level, the loan moves forward; if it falls short, the application is declined.
4. Result delivery - After the assessment, you receive a decision along with a summary view of the credit data Relay accessed, so you can see exactly what was considered during that moment-in-time check.

Relay watches for movements that suggest a material shift in risk. By default it will fire an alert when your numeric credit score jumps up or down by 20 points or more since the last refresh, because such a swing typically reflects a new account, a large balance change, or a recent collection. It also flags any transition across the major rating bands that Upstart uses during underwriting-so moving from "good" (670-739) into "fair" (580-669) or from "very good" (740-799) into "excellent" (800+) will prompt a notification even if the point change is smaller than the 20-point rule.

In addition to raw score shifts, Relay reacts to specific events that tend to affect loan eligibility. A newly recorded hard inquiry, a newly opened revolving account, or the reporting of a delinquency that pushes an existing balance past the 30-day threshold all count as triggers. Conversely, modest point gains that stay within the same rating band and don't accompany these account-level changes generally won't generate an alert, keeping notifications focused on changes most likely to impact your borrowing terms.

When Relay pulls your credit data, it does so from the three major bureaus at the moment of each scheduled refresh. The score you see is the latest number those bureaus calculated using the version of their scoring model that was current at the time of the pull. If you happen to check your score on a day when a new scoring version has just been released-or if one bureau updates a tradeline a few days before the others-Relay will display the most recent figure from that bureau, which can diverge from what you see on a web-based credit-monitoring service that may be using an older model or a different bureau's average.

Conversely, many consumers compare the Relay score to a number they obtained elsewhere weeks earlier or from a lender's pre-qualification tool. Those external scores often reflect a "soft" inquiry performed under a different scoring algorithm, and they may incorporate data that hasn't yet been reported to the bureaus (such as recent payments on a new loan). Because Relay's refresh cadence is fixed and its pulls are limited to what's officially on your credit file at that instant, any lag in reporting, a frozen file, or a pending inquiry can cause the Relay score to appear higher or lower than the figure you recall from another source.

Accounts that are closed but still reported as "inactive" - Relay won't display them because they're not part of the active tradeline set it pulls.

Credit inquiries that are marked "soft" and not tied to a recent loan application - these are filtered out unless they affect the score you're monitoring.

Frozen or security-blocked files - if a consumer placed a freeze, Relay cannot retrieve any tradeline data from that bureau until the freeze is lifted.

Errors or disputes flagged on the credit report - while the underlying score may change, Relay doesn't show the dispute status or pending corrections.

Non-traditional credit sources such as utility payments reported through third-party aggregators - Relay's pull focuses on the major bureaus' core reporting categories.

Any personal identifying information beyond the minimal identifiers needed for the score lookup (e.g., full address history, Social Security number details).

After you've completed the initial underwriting pull, Relay switches to a scheduled-refresh model that pulls a fresh snapshot of your credit data roughly every 30 days. Each refresh is a soft inquiry, so it won't affect any of the scores in your file, and it pulls the same set of tradelines that were available at the time of the last pull-new accounts, recent payments, and any changes to balances or credit limits that have been reported to the major bureaus since the previous cycle.

If you have a freeze on any of your credit files, that bureau's data will simply be omitted from the refresh, which can result in a slightly older view for those particular accounts until you lift the freeze. The 30-day cadence is consistent across all users; there isn't a real-time push for every new tradeline, and Relay does not attempt additional pulls mid-cycle unless you manually trigger a "Refresh Now" request through the app, which forces an immediate soft pull and updates your displayed credit data ahead of the regular schedule.

If you place a freeze on your credit file, most lenders-including the ones Relay queries-cannot pull any information until you lift the restriction. During the underwriting phase, Upstart will request a one-time "soft" pull; if the file is frozen at that moment, the request simply returns a "blocked" status and Relay records that it could not retrieve a score or report. The same limitation applies to the ongoing monitoring schedule: every scheduled refresh will be denied, and Relay will show a "data unavailable" flag instead of a refreshed score.

What you can expect when a freeze is active:

• The most recent score displayed before the freeze remains visible until the next successful refresh.
• No new tradeline additions, payment updates, or balance changes will appear in Relay's view.
• Alerts tied to score movement or risk-based triggers will be paused because Relay lacks fresh data to evaluate.
• Once you temporarily lift or permanently remove the freeze, the next scheduled pull will capture the current score and report, overwriting the "data unavailable" notice.

In practice, a frozen file means Relay behaves like a silent observer-it cannot see any activity and therefore cannot notify you of changes. As soon as you unfreeze, the monitoring cycle resumes its regular cadence, and any accumulated changes will be reflected in the next update. Keeping track of when you toggle a freeze helps you anticipate gaps in Relay's insights.

If you notice that Relay is displaying inaccurate credit data-such as an outdated balance, a mis-dated inquiry, or a score that doesn't match the one you see on your lender's portal-start by confirming the discrepancy against your own credit report from the three major bureaus. Because Relay pulls the freshest file it can access, any mismatch often stems from a reporting lag, a recent dispute, or a freeze that limits what Relay can retrieve. Document the exact line item that looks wrong, note the date you observed it in Relay, and gather supporting evidence (e.g., a recent statement or a dispute confirmation) before taking action.

Typical next steps include: 1 Log into your Upstart account and use the "Report an Issue" feature to flag the specific entry; 2 Contact the creditor or collection agency responsible for the erroneous tradeline to request a correction, then ask them to update all three bureaus; 3 If a freeze is in place, temporarily lift it for the affected bureau so Relay can re-pull the corrected file; 4 After the creditor confirms the update, allow 24-48 hours for Relay's scheduled refresh to reflect the change; 5 If the error persists after a refresh, reach out to Upstart support with your documentation for further investigation. This systematic approach helps ensure that Relay's view aligns with the true state of your credit data.