How Much Credit Repair Actually Costs

By the Credit Phoenix team · Last updated: September 11, 2026

The short answer

Two price shapes cover almost the whole industry. The first is setup plus monthly: a fee at the start, then a recurring charge each month while the company keeps sending disputes and reading the responses. The second is pay in full for a defined program: one total price for a set number of dispute rounds, usually billed in stages as the work is done. Some companies offer one shape, some offer both, and the dollar amounts vary widely enough that we are not going to print an industry range here. We do not have a public source for one, and a number without a source is a guess dressed up as a fact.

What we can tell you is what we charge, which is the same on this page as on our full pricing page, and what each shape is actually buying you. Price shopping in this industry goes better when you know what a fee is for, and when you know the one thing the law says about timing.

You can dispute errors on your credit reports yourself, for free. Nothing a credit repair company does for you legally is something you cannot do on your own. The Fair Credit Reporting Act gives you that right, the bureaus cannot charge you for it, and the free route is a real option, not a disclaimer. This page is general information, not legal advice. Results vary and are not guaranteed.

What the law says about when you can be charged

The Credit Repair Organizations Act, or CROA, is the federal law that governs companies like ours. Its section on prohibited practices, 15 U.S.C. § 1679b(b), says that no credit repair organization may charge or receive payment for a service it has agreed to perform before that service is fully performed. The same law requires a written contract that states the total amount of all payments you will make and a full and detailed description of the services (15 U.S.C. § 1679d), and it gives you the right to cancel that contract, without penalty, before midnight of the third business day after you sign it (15 U.S.C. § 1679e).

Put plainly: a company is supposed to be paid for work it has done, not for work it is promising to do. That is why the honest shape of a first payment is a fee tied to a specific piece of completed work, not a deposit against future results. It is also why "pay today and we will have you cleaned up in 30 days" is the wrong shape. The results have not happened, the work has not happened, and the law is aimed squarely at that arrangement.

The Federal Trade Commission's Fixing Your Credit FAQs and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's page on telling a credit repair scam from a reputable service both say the same thing in plain English: a company cannot request or receive payment until it has completed the services it promised, and you can cancel within three business days at no charge. We are not lawyers and we are not going to tell you how a court would read any particular contract. We are telling you what the statute says so you can read a price list with it in mind.

This is what a "first work fee" is. It is not a fee for filling out a form. It pays for the first block of work: pulling and reading all three of your reports, building the item by item audit, and preparing your first round of disputes. It is billed when that work starts. On a pay in full plan the remaining balance is not taken up front, either. It is billed once your first round of letters is prepared and ready to send, and not before.

What we charge, exactly

Three plans. Each one includes a full three-bureau analysis and disputes that escalate round by round. The tiers differ in scope, not in effort, and paying more does not buy a promised outcome. Results vary and are not guaranteed.

Starter

$149 first work fee, then $97 a month, month to month, cancel any time. Starter disputes at the bureau level, meaning Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. Every negative item is reviewed and challenged where there is a legitimate basis, every round, and you get a progress report each month whether or not anything changed. It fits a report with a handful of clear problems. A pay in full option exists for Starter with a four round cap; the total is on the pricing page.

Pro

$249 first work fee, then $199 a month, month to month, cancel any time. Pro adds a second layer: direct disputes to the original creditors and collectors, plus the secondary bureaus most people never check, ChexSystems, Innovis, and LexisNexis. It fits a report where collections and older accounts are doing the damage and the bureaus alone are unlikely to move them. Pro also has a pay in full option with a four round cap, priced on the pricing page.

Elite

$299 to start, then a $698 remaining balance billed once your first round of letters is prepared and ready to send. $997 total. Elite is a one time program with six rounds, not a monthly plan, and there is no subscription after the balance. To be blunt about the number people misread: $698 is not monthly. It is billed once. Elite includes everything in Pro plus Inquiry Removal and ChexSystems Removal at no extra cost, funding readiness prep, and a direct line to your specialist. It fits complex files and anyone preparing for a mortgage or business funding.

Credit monitoring: $19.99 a month, separate

Every plan requires credit monitoring at $19.99 a month through our monitoring partner, Credit Hero Score. It is billed by them, not by us, and it is not padding. Monitoring is how we pull your three reports and see what changed after each round. We cannot do accurate work on a report we cannot see, and a plan that skips this step is disputing blind. It has the side benefit of flagging new accounts and inquiries on your file while the work is running.

Add-ons

Two specialized services can be added to any plan or bought on their own: Inquiry Removal, for hard inquiries you did not authorize, and ChexSystems Removal, for the banking report that decides whether you can open a checking account. Both are one time charges, both are priced on the pricing page, and both are already included in Elite. We do not sell any other add-on. If something is not on the pricing page, it is not a charge.

What you are paying for

Since you can do all of this yourself, the honest way to judge a price is to know what the fee replaces. Here is the work inside a Credit Phoenix plan, in the order it happens.

• The audit. We pull all three reports through monitoring and go line by line: personal information, every account, every inquiry, every public record. Each item gets a call: inaccurate, incomplete, unverifiable, or accurate. Accurate items are not disputed, and we tell you which ones those are up front, because disputing true history is the one thing this process is not for.
• The letters. A specific, factual dispute for each flagged item, to each bureau reporting it, with the supporting document attached. Not a form letter that cites a statute and demands "proof." A letter that gives the bureau something concrete to investigate.
• The escalation. When a bureau comes back "verified," we request the method of verification, then dispute directly with the furnisher under Regulation V, then file with the CFPB if a deadline is missed. Every follow-up adds something, because a repeated letter with nothing new can be treated as frivolous. This is the part most people doing it themselves stop at.
• The tracking. Every mail date, every 30 to 45 day statutory clock, every response, logged per bureau per item. A missed deadline by a bureau is only useful if someone noticed it.
• The monthly report. Each month you get what went out, what came back, what changed on each report, and what happens next round. Results or not.

Put another way, you are paying for time, organization, and experience reading responses. You are not paying for a different legal process, a special relationship with the bureaus, or a result. Nobody can lawfully sell you a result, and we do not try. Results vary and are not guaranteed.

Monthly vs pay in full

On Starter and Pro you can pay month to month or pay for the program in full. The work is identical either way. The difference is in how long it runs and how the money is timed.

Month to month runs until you cancel. There is no cap on rounds: as long as you are a client, letters keep going out every 30 to 45 days and you keep getting a monthly report. The first work fee is billed when the analysis and first round begin, your first monthly payment comes 30 days later, and every month after on that date. If you cancel, the next month does not bill.

Pay in full buys a defined program with a round cap: four rounds on Starter, four on Pro, six on Elite. The first work fee is billed when the work starts and the remaining balance is billed once your first round of letters is prepared and ready to send. When the rounds are used, the program is finished. You can then move to month to month, continue on your own, or stop.

Which fits you is not a question we can answer with a number of months, because nobody can honestly predict how many rounds a file needs. What we can say is that month to month suits someone who wants to stay flexible and stop the moment they are satisfied, and pay in full suits someone who wants one settled total and a program that runs to its end. The pay in full totals for Starter and Pro are on the pricing page, and Elite is pay in full only at $997.

The guarantee windows and how cancellation works

Three separate things protect you, and it helps to keep them separate.

The federal right to cancel. Under CROA you can cancel your contract with any credit repair company, without penalty or obligation, by notifying them in writing before midnight of the third business day after you sign. That is 15 U.S.C. § 1679e, it applies to us like everyone else, and our contract says so near the signature line because the law requires it to.

Month to month cancellation. No long-term contract. Cancel any time and the next month simply does not bill. You are never locked in past the month you have already paid for.

The money-back window. Each plan carries a window, 120 days on Starter and 90 days on Pro and Elite, during which, if not a single item is removed from your credit report, we refund the program fees you paid us. That is a refund policy, not a prediction. The full terms, including what counts and how to request it, are on our refund policy page. Results vary and are not guaranteed.

Rounds and windows are separate attributes. A four round program and a 120 day window are not the same clock, and neither one is a promise about what will be on your report at the end.

Fees that should make you walk

You will see these in the wild. None of them are named after a company, because the shape is the problem, not the name on the door.

• An advance fee before any work. "Pay today, we start next week." Section 1679b(b) of CROA prohibits charging or receiving payment for a service before it is fully performed. A fee that is not tied to work already done is the single clearest warning sign in the industry.
• An "activation" or "file setup" fee that is not in the contract. Section 1679d requires the written contract to state the total amount of all payments you will make. A fee that appears after you sign was not in that total. Ask for it in writing, then ask why it was not there before.
• Per-deletion fees on items that would have fallen off anyway. Some negatives age off on their own under the FCRA's reporting limits. Billing you per item, without showing what was actually disputed and why, invites charging for the calendar. If you see a per-item price, ask for the audit that shows each item was inaccurate, incomplete, or unverifiable.
• Long prepaid commitments. Six or twelve months paid up front is the advance fee problem wearing a different coat. It is also incompatible with a three business day cancellation right that means anything.
• A price attached to a promise. Any fee justified by a guaranteed score, a guaranteed deletion, or a guaranteed date. CROA's prohibited practices section bars untrue or misleading representations about what a company can do, and nobody can remove accurate, current, and verifiable information from a credit report.

The FTC's own warning signs match this list: demanding payment before services are done, telling you not to contact the bureaus yourself, telling you to dispute accurate information. If you have been asked for any of these, report it at reportfraud.ftc.gov.

The free option

Every dispute a company sends on your behalf, you can send yourself, at no cost, under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. The bureaus cannot charge you to investigate. We publish the full process, including the letters and the escalation steps, in our DIY credit dispute kit. If you fix your file with it and never pay us, that is a good outcome and we mean that.

Here is the honest side by side. The DIY column is a description, not a dollar figure, because what it costs you is mostly time.

Hiring help tends to make sense with many items across all three bureaus, a file where you have already been stonewalled, or no time to run a months-long campaign of letters and deadlines. It tends not to make sense for one or two clear errors and a free weekend, and we will say so. Either way, the right first step is the same: a free report review, where we read your actual reports and tell you which items look disputable, including when the answer is to run the kit yourself. Our free Credit Improvement Guide covers what to check before disputing anything, our guide to what credit repair can and cannot do sets expectations, and all our credit guides are free. Pricing questions we hear often are answered in the FAQ. Results vary and are not guaranteed.

Frequently asked questions