<prompt> Human: Ive been wondering how this works for a long time and Im wondering if someone can please shed some light on this for me. The 3 major credit agencies typically charge fees for telling me my credit score though not for giving me my credit report, which I know I can get for free. How can companies like Credit Karma offer details on my credit score for free? Do they pay Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax for my credit score, and eat the cost assuming theyll make up for it by pushing some other financial product they will get paid for? Is it effectively a marketing cost for them? Or is there something shadier going on? Also, CK is able to give me an updated score pretty frequently. Is that causing a pull on my credit score? Just trying to understand how I should view the score theyre giving - i.e., whether itll roughly approximate my actual score, or if its just some magic number they come up with to get me to sign up as a customer?Thanks!!  <response>: If the product is free, then youre the product. Credit Karma shows you credit card offers you might be eligible for to collect advertising revenue.They get the credit score for cheap because its Vantage Score, not FICO. Vantage Score is a scoring system created by the credit bureaus to compete with FICO. So far its not used much at all by lenders as lenders are still satisfied with FICO. 