On the credit bureaus (American)
So the major credit bureaus would absolutely love it if you spent your money on a credit report or score monitoring or whatever. That's absolutely not necessary, although they do like to hide such things, so you think you have to pay for it to varying degrees. They also try to sell you credit locks, all of these things are lies.
You can access your report for free (once a year for all 3 sites, doesn't have to be at the same time. staggering pulls is an option for monitoring). They just make it a pain in the ass, so you think you have to purchase it. Experian and Equifax also have regular score reporting/viewing, which does not have the details included in the report, but can help with monitoring for any issues.
On equifax, create an account and it will make it look like you have to pay for something on the first screen, tell it no and from there you can access the free options. You can also opt to link bank accounts through credit boost and it will monitor for regular bill payments (utilities, rent, etc), which is an absolute boon if you have little in the way of previous credit or a poor score. You do have to re-link it periodically, but it's worth the hassle to build a better score.
On Transunion, I believe you go in through the service login option as there are three (at least that's how I have it set up and it allows me to manage my credit freeze as well).
Experian is the most straightforward and you can just log in.
Disputing items on the score is possible and free through all three sites.
You can also FREEZE your credit for free with all three bureaus, Lenders can't make hard pull on your account, when you have an active freeze. Generally, they say it's for cases of identity theft, etc. However, you can use it preemptively like you would a paid credit lock product. You can unfreeze it at any time and while they make it mildly annoying, it's free. You have to do it individually with each of the bureaus, although some allow you to schedule the dates of a thaw. It's almost instantaneous, so you don't have to worry about planning to thaw it before getting a card or loan.
Both equifax and transunion keep freeze information towards the top of the page. Just click into it and go from there.
Experian hides the credit freeze option in the menu at the bottom of the webpage. Scroll to the bottom, click the freeze option, and you can set it up from there.
