Credit Building > What are the best Loqbox competitors and alternatives?

What are the best Loqbox competitors and alternatives?

Wollit Team2 minute read · Updated 1st July 2024

If you want to improve your credit score, you’ve probably heard about Loqbox. Founded in 2012, it’s one of the UK’s oldest credit-building tools. It works by locking away a small amount of your savings and then giving you a 0% APR loan for the same amount, which you pay off monthly. At the end of the year, they return your money to you in full.

However, if you’re on this page, you probably also became aware of some of its cons:

To get your money back, you’ll have to open an account with one of their partners (usually, opening a new bank account can hurt your credit score temporarily)
And if you don’t want to open one, you’ll have to pay an additional £30.

Here is a list of the best Loqbox competitors and how they differ from Loqbox.

CreditLadder

CreditLadder is an app that ensures your rent payment each month counts toward your credit history. It reports your rent payments to all the main credit reference agencies—Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion—as well as Crediva, a smaller agency that uses “alternative scoring models.”

CreditLadder also reports your rental payment history to one of the largest UK banks, Nationwide. Using this app can, in theory, give you better mortgage rates with Nationwide.

CreditLadder has an interesting pricing:

If you don’t want to pay, it’s free to use, but you must choose only one credit reference agency (CRA) to report your rent to.
Or pay £8 and report to all credit reference agencies.

Using CreditLadder can put you in a better light regarding how lenders see you. Still, ultimately, your rent is not actually used in the credit score calculations by any CRAs. So, it’s unclear what the benefit from the premium plan actually is.

Credito

Credito claims to be the UK’s “highest-rated credit building app”. It costs £19.99 a month, and it offers a few features:

Your monthly subscription is reported as a loan repayment, much like Loqbox does.
You get a personal credit coach. Once you sign up, someone will call you and walk you through a quick credit score improvement plan over the phone.
And it also reports your rental payments, just like CreditLader.

However, all these are available only on the most expensive plan, £19.99 a month. If you choose the more basic £9.99 one, you’ll get no credit score coach or rent reporting.

Pave

Pave is similar to Credito in many ways. It reports your £9/month subscription as a loan repayment, potentially helping you improve your credit score. However, it doesn’t offer any other direct credit building features.

Bits

Bits also reports your monthly subscription as a loan repayment. However, the fees can vary between £2 and £20 per month, and it’s entirely up to you which one you choose.

This can make it a bit unclear what the impact on your credit score is—in theory, a larger subscription counts as a larger “loan,” but we couldn’t find any explanation of what kind of credit score improvement a Bits customer can expect.

Wollit

Wollit, the newest credit-building app on this list, offers multiple features that combine the best of the apps we just covered:

It reports your monthly subscription to all three leading credit reference agencies: Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion;
As part of the same subscription, it also reports your rent to Experian, helping you enrich your credit history and show lenders that you pay your bills on time;
It has an iOS and Android app and works in your browser, so you can use it on any device.

Ultimately, whichever Loqbox competitor you choose is up to you. But we believe that Wollit can be the ideal credit-building app for most people:

It’s available on any device;
It helps you improve your credit score by acting as a loan repayment;
It offers additional features like rent reporting or buy now pay later monitoring that other apps charge extra for.