Soft Inquiry
Also called: soft pull, soft credit check
A soft inquiry is a look at your credit file that doesn't affect your score — checking your own report, a pre-approval offer, an employer or landlord screening, or a lender's periodic account review. Only you can see most of them. The practical consequence: checking your own credit is free and harmless, so the widespread belief that looking at your score lowers it is simply wrong. Pre-qualification tools use soft pulls; the real application is what triggers the hard one.