How to Unfreeze Credit for Free

Unfreezing credit is about restoring access to your credit report, assuming you’ve already chosen to do a credit freeze. Some people are confused about credit freezes. Many think it means freezing their current credit card accounts — which would be a major pain for most Americans — rather than freezing access to reports about their credit history.

They miss the point that credit freezes are about protecting you from the cost and disruption to your life that can happen when identity thieves attempt to open new accounts in your name. Freezing your credit does not protect you against criminals who might steal from your existing credit card, bank accounts, etc.²

You’ll want to at least temporarily unfreeze access to your credit report for many big steps in life. Your credit report is obviously important if you’re trying to buy a house or a car, or to open a new credit card account. Other purposes are less obvious. 

• American society is very credit-oriented — cumulative household debt rose to $17.69 trillion during the first quarter of 2024, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.³
• Employers use it in screening job applicants, landlords use it to vet tenants, and insurers use it in the underwriting process, to name just a few.

The unfreezing process is pretty similar at all three credit bureaus. And it can be fast and easy if you’ve safeguarded your account logins and passwords.

• You can unfreeze your credit online (fastest), by phone, or by mail (takes longest).
• The law requires a credit bureau to remove a freeze within one hour if the request is made online or by phone, or three business days after receipt if it’s made by mail.⁴
• Still, online is faster than phone because it is far less time-consuming than using an automated phone system.

For the purpose of this article, I went online to temporarily unfreeze my credit for three days at TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian. It took roughly a minute at TransUnion: 

• TransUnion used two-factor authentication during login, sending a six-digit code to my email address that I had to enter into the login page.
• After logging in, I clicked “credit freeze” in the top navigation bar.
• The credit freeze page told me “Your report is frozen” at the top and offered options to “Remove Freeze” or “Temporarily Lift Freeze.” I chose the latter.
• Next, I was presented with a form to choose the start date and end date for my temporary unfreeze, which I did. 
• Click and done! A confirmation page showed me the unfreeze start and stop dates.                   

At Equifax, you need to establish an account, similar to TransUnion: 

• It only took a few minutes (and the typical personal information: address, social security number, email address, date of birth, etc.) to set up my account.
• Once logged into my Equifax account, I experienced the same steps as at TransUnion, and the same minute was all the time I spent choosing a temporary lift and its start/end dates.

My Experian online experience was essentially identical to Equifax. Experian asked for the same information during account setup, and asked me five or six multiple-choice questions about my past borrowing to make sure I was who I claimed. Once logged in, the Experian process for unfreezing was the same as the others, though the words and site behavior were slightly different: 

• Instead of options to “lift” or “temporarily remove” my freeze, I clicked a button to “Schedule a thaw.”
• A panel slid from the right side of the browser to ask if I wanted to temporarily thaw my credit; I clicked yes.
• I chose the start and end dates, at which point two things happened at once: A message appeared at the bottom of the panel saying “Success. Your thaw was successfully scheduled” and the main part of the page on the left changed its display from “Your file is frozen” to “Your file is unfrozen” and “It will automatically freeze on [end date].”