FICO freezes its $10 mortgage price for a year; Equifax sells the $1 rival through 2028

A freeze the market marked down

After the close on October 23, 2026, Fair Isaac▼−6.71% — Fair Isaac, down 6.71 percent today (NYSE: FICO), the company behind the credit score attached to most US mortgages, said it will hold that score's wholesale mortgage price at $10 into 2027↗ for lenders and brokers enrolled in its Preferred Program, with the classic score and the newer 10T bundled in ¹². The shares closed the day at $815.31, down 51.77 percent for the year ³, then fell 6 percent in after-hours trading ².

One year of $10 against two years of $1

Mortgage scoring is about 43 percent of Fair Isaac's revenue, as The Inference established last week, and in the June quarter mortgage-score revenue rose 97 percent on volumes that grew low single digits: the growth was price, not traffic ⁴. The fee more than doubled to $10 in 2025↗ ⁵, capping a run of increases one investor tally puts at roughly 800 percent since 2022 ⁶.

Fair Isaac's freeze runs one year ². Equifax▼−2.47% — Equifax, down 2.47 percent today has committed VantageScore 4.0, the rival score owned by the three credit bureaus, at $1 through the end of 2028↗, and TransUnion▼−4.06% — TransUnion, down 4.06 percent today sells it at 99 cents ⁵⁷⁸. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac opened VantageScore to every approved lender on September 9, 2026, and aligned upfront fees across both scores on September 30↗ ⁹.

Nearly 2,000 lenders and resellers have taken Equifax's offer since April, with pulls up 230 percent, and more than 165 use the rival exclusively on some loans, per the company ⁷. The $10 protects the lenders FICO already has; the price for everyone else is $1, a $9 difference on every score pulled ⁹. The bundle's 10T is even a score Fannie and Freddie cannot yet accept in delivery ⁹.

The freeze defends a 91 percent margin

The June-quarter filing shows what is at stake: Scores segment revenue of $458.9 million, up 41 percent, at a roughly 91 percent segment margin ⁸. Fair Isaac ended June carrying $5.6 billion of debt, up from $3.1 billion in September 2025, after repurchasing $2.3 billion of stock in the quarter, $1.5 billion of it through a term-loan-funded accelerated buyback ⁸.

A restructuring dated October 1, 2026, cuts about 15 percent of positions at a $27 million charge↗ ¹⁰. Revenue growth ran 11 to 20 percent for ten quarters, jumped to 38.7 percent in the quarter ended March 2026, and had already faded to 25.7 percent by June ¹¹.

The Street has not marked it down

United Wholesale Mortgage, the largest US mortgage lender, reaffirmed on October 6, 2026, that it will run FICO scores on every credit pull in its broker operation↗ ¹². Equifax's own fourth-quarter guidance still assumes a FICO score on every mortgage transaction ⁴. Barclays▼−1.45% — Barclays, down 1.45 percent today kept a Buy on October 24 at $875, the lowest named broker target; the TipRanks consensus sits at $1,155.13 ¹³, while one target on the board, $490, lies about 40 percent below the shares ⁴.

November 4 separates price from volume

The fiscal fourth-quarter report lands November 4, 2026, after the close↗ ¹⁴. The quarter it covers ended September 30, the day the fee grid went single, so it holds only three weeks of open access to the rival ⁹. Two lines decide it: mortgage-score revenue, and the realized price per score, with volume stripped out ⁸. The price is frozen, so the 43 percent line grows only if lenders keep choosing $10 over $1 ⁸. A company with real pricing power does not announce a year of not using it.