Is your mortgage rate good for your credit score?
Search for this question and you will find tables of average rates by credit band. Here is why those tables cannot answer it: an average blends every down payment, every loan size, every point bought, and every day of the month into one number. Your quote came from one scenario on one day. Comparing it to a blended average tells you almost nothing.
What is actually true about credit scores and conventional rates is published. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac price credit score directly, through loan level price adjustments, and the matrices are public. At 20 percent down, the published pricing looks like this:
| Credit score band | Pricing adjustment (points) |
|---|---|
| 780 and up | 0.375 |
| 760 to 779 | 0.625 |
| 740 to 759 | 0.875 |
| 720 to 739 | 1.250 |
| 700 to 719 | 1.375 |
| 680 to 699 | 1.750 |
| 660 to 679 | 1.875 |
| 640 to 659 | 2.250 |
| Below 640 | 2.750 |
Source: Fannie Mae LLPA Matrix and Freddie Mac Exhibit 19, effective 2026-01-28. One point = 1 percent of the loan amount.
First, what a point is, in plain English: a cost, not a rate. One point means one percent of the loan amount, paid once. The 1.375 point gap between a 680 score and a 780 score is $4,125 on a $300,000 loan. You will rarely see that as a line item, because lenders usually absorb it into the interest rate instead, commonly in the neighborhood of an eighth to three eighths of a percent of rate per point, varying by day and lender. Industry pricing desks quote the same numbers in basis points: 1.375 points is 137.5 bps. What it never means is 1.375 added to your rate.
Read the table plainly: at the same down payment, a 680 score carries 1.375 points more in agency pricing than a 780 score. Lenders convert that cost into your rate, your fees, or both. So a "good rate" for a 780 borrower and a "good rate" for a 680 borrower are different numbers on the same morning, by a knowable amount.
Grading your own rate therefore takes three ingredients: the market level on the day your loan was priced, the published adjustments for your exact scenario, and the points you paid to get the quoted number. All three are public. Assembling them by hand is possible and tedious, which is exactly the read our report performs.
Common questions
How much does credit score affect a mortgage rate?
For conventional loans the effect is published, not mysterious. At 20 percent down the agency pricing spread from the top score band to the lowest is 2.375 points of loan amount, which lenders express through rate or fees.
Do FHA and VA loans price credit score the same way?
No. FHA and VA do not use the agency matrices. Their pricing is driven by program fees and mortgage insurance, so score affects approval and lender overlays more than a published grid.
Will a rate table for my score band tell me if my quote is fair?
It tells you the blended average of many different scenarios. Your quote can be better than the average and still poor for your profile, or worse than the average and still strong.
This page answers the general question. What it cannot answer is where your numbers sit. The AI reads your Loan Estimate line by line and grades your Section A total and your rate against this same public data, priced for your credit, your down payment, and your loan type. One upload, one $29 report, and your document is deleted once it is delivered.