How collections affect your score in FICO 8, 9, 10 and VantageScore

There is no single answer to “how much does a collection hurt,” because there is no single credit score. The collection on your report is one fact. Each scoring model is a different set of rules for reading that fact, and the rules changed a lot between FICO 8 and the versions that came after it.

That’s why someone can pay off a collection, watch one app jump, and see their mortgage lender’s number not move at all. Nothing is broken. Different models are reading the same paid collection differently.

What every model agrees on

An unpaid third-party collection account is a serious negative in every FICO and VantageScore version in use today. It lands in payment history, the category FICO weights most heavily, and it signals that a debt went unpaid long enough for the creditor to hand it off or sell it.

Two more points hold across the board:

• The reporting clock is the same. Under 15 U.S.C. 1681c(c), a collection can stay on your report for seven years, starting 180 days after the original delinquency began. Paying doesn’t restart that clock, and neither does a sale to a new collector.
• Age softens it. myFICO says the effect of a collection fades over time, even while it’s still listed. A three-year-old collection usually weighs less than a three-month-old one.

FICO doesn’t publish point values, so any site promising that a collection “costs 100 points” is guessing. The size of the hit depends on what else is in your file. On a clean report, one new collection stands out sharply. On a report that already has late payments and a charge-off, the extra damage is often smaller.

The version-by-version rules

The table below pulls together what myFICO, Experian and VantageScore have published. “Ignored” means the model doesn’t count the item at all, even though it may still be listed on your report.

A few of those cells need explanation.

The $100 rule is about the original balance. myFICO says FICO 8 ignores third-party collections whose original amount was under $100. A $60 collection that has grown to $140 with fees is still under the line, because the model looks at the original amount.

“Not published” means exactly that. VantageScore says its models since 2013 ignore paid collections, and that VantageScore 3.0 and 4.0 stopped using medical collection data in 2022. We could not find a VantageScore statement on small-balance or settled collections, so we won’t guess.

Classic mortgage scores are the old rules. myFICO says older FICO versions don’t get these exclusions. Those older versions (FICO 2 from Experian, FICO 5 from Equifax and FICO 4 from TransUnion) are still what many mortgage lenders pull, which is why a paid collection can still matter at the mortgage stage. That’s starting to shift: FHFA says lenders selling loans to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can choose VantageScore 4.0 instead of Classic FICO, and it opened that option to all approved lenders on September 9, 2026. Lenders pick loan by loan, so you won’t always know in advance. See the credit scores mortgage lenders actually pull for more.

Medical collections get two layers of protection

Medical debt is filtered twice: once by the bureaus, before any score sees it, and again by the newer models.

The three nationwide bureaus removed paid medical collections as of July 1, 2022, lengthened the wait before unpaid medical collections can appear from six months to one year, and removed medical collections with an initial balance under $500 as of April 11, 2023, according to their joint announcement. So a medical collection that’s paid, under $500, or less than a year old shouldn’t be on your report in the first place, and no score version will count it.

What’s left is unpaid medical collections of $500 or more that are over a year old. FICO 8 counts those like any other collection. myFICO says FICO 9 and FICO 10 give them less weight. VantageScore 3.0 and 4.0 don’t use them. The federal rule that would have gone further was vacated in 2025; medical debt on credit reports in 2026 covers where things stand now.

A worked example: one report, five readings

Say your report shows three collections, all more than a year old:

• A cable bill sent to collections with an original balance of $85, unpaid
• A credit card debt sold to a debt buyer, original balance $1,200, now paid in full
• A hospital bill in collections, original balance $700, unpaid

Run that file through each model and count what it sees:

Same report, and the count of collections the model sees runs from zero to three. That’s the mechanism behind most “why are my scores so far apart” complaints when collections are involved. It also tells you where paying would and wouldn’t help: paying the hospital bill removes it from your report entirely under the bureaus’ medical policy, while paying the cable bill changes nothing for FICO 8, 9 or 10, which already ignore it.

The original credit card account that went to the debt buyer would still show its own late payments and charge-off in every model. A collection usually has a parent account, and paying the collection doesn’t clean up the parent. Charge-off vs. collection explains how the two entries relate.

First-party collections play by different rules

myFICO draws a line between third-party collections (an outside agency or debt buyer) and first-party collections, where the original lender’s own staff are collecting. First-party collections stay derogatory and don’t get the paid or small-balance exclusions.

There’s one more difference. myFICO says third-party collection balances don’t count toward your credit utilization, but first-party collection balances may. If a card issuer is collecting on a maxed-out account in-house, that balance can keep weighing on the amounts-owed part of your score in a way an outside collector’s balance doesn’t.

What to do with this

1. Find out which score matters for your next application. Many card lenders use FICO 8 or a VantageScore. Mortgage lenders often use the classic versions. Auto lenders may use FICO Auto Scores. If you can’t tell what a score is, the score decoder helps identify it.
2. Pull all three reports at AnnualCreditReport.com, which is free every week, and list each collection with its original balance, current status and date of first delinquency.
3. Check medical collections first. Anything medical that’s paid, under $500 or less than a year past collection shouldn’t be there. That’s an accuracy problem you can dispute.
4. Validate before you pay. If a collector contacted you recently, you may still be inside the 30-day window to demand proof.
5. Decide on payment with your target score in mind. Paying helps under FICO 9, FICO 10 and VantageScore. Under FICO 8 and mortgage scores, the paid collection still counts until it ages off. Should you pay a collection account? walks through that decision.