How to Get a Personal Loan With Bad Credit

“Bad credit” doesn’t have one fixed definition, but in practice it means your score sits below where a lender draws its own line — usually somewhere under 600 to 620. Among the lenders covered on this site, Avant is the clearest example: it publishes a 580 minimum credit score. LendingPoint doesn’t publish a hard cutoff, but its own listed requirement describes a credit score “typically 640 or higher,” and third-party analyses put its practical floor around the same number. Most other lenders in this range — OneMain Financial, Mariner Finance, NetCredit, and several others — publish no minimum score at all, and say instead that they weigh income, banking history, and existing debt alongside whatever a credit report shows.

This page is about what to do next: the steps that can actually improve your odds of approval, which lenders let you check a rate without a hard pull, and what a bad-credit loan will really cost once the APR and term are both counted. It doesn’t cover which products to avoid or what to watch for in the fine print — bad-credit installment loans: what to watch for is the companion page for that, and it’s worth reading before you sign anything.

Step 1: Know your number and what’s dragging it

Before you apply anywhere, pull your own credit report and read it the way an underwriter would — not just the score, but the specific items lowering it. A collection account, a high card balance relative to its limit, or a handful of late payments each drag the number down differently, and knowing which one is doing the damage changes what you do next. Read your credit report line by line walks through what each section means. If something on the report is wrong — an account that isn’t yours, a balance that’s outdated, a payment marked late that wasn’t — dispute credit report errors covers how to get it corrected before you apply, since a single fixed error can sometimes move you into a different pricing tier.

Step 2: Check rates with soft pulls only

Because a hard credit inquiry can ding your score, and because bad-credit pricing varies a lot from one lender to the next, checking your rate somewhere that uses a soft pull first is worth doing before you commit to a full application anywhere. Among the lenders reviewed on this site, Avant, Upstart, LendingPoint, OneMain Financial, Mariner Finance, RISE, NetCredit, Personify Financial, CashNetUSA, LendingClub, and Upgrade all describe their initial rate check as a soft credit pull that doesn’t affect your score, with a hard inquiry only running if you accept an offer and move forward. Integra Credit and Possible Finance don’t state whether their initial check is a soft or hard pull, so don’t assume either way going in. OppLoans is the one clear exception: an application there triggers a hard inquiry with Clarity Services alongside a soft Experian pull, so there’s no soft-only step to use before applying.

Checking your rate at a few soft-pull lenders costs nothing in score terms, so there’s little reason to apply blind at just one. Personal-loan credit score requirements has the fuller published-minimum table if you want to see where every reviewed lender’s line sits before you start.

Step 3: Match the lender to your score

As of September 2026, here’s what each of these lenders publishes about its minimum credit score, APR range, loan amounts, and whether its initial rate check uses a soft pull:

Lender	Published minimum	APR range	Loan amount	Soft-pull rate check
Avant	580 published	9.95%-35.99%	$2,000-$35,000	Yes
Upstart	No fixed minimum; approved scores as low as 300	6.3%-35.99%	$1,000-$75,000	Yes
LendingPoint	Not published (typically 640 or higher, per its own listed requirement)	7.99%-35.99%	$1,000-$36,500	Yes
OneMain Financial	Not published	11.99%-35.99%	$1,500-$30,000	Yes
Mariner Finance	Not published	15.99%-35.99%	$1,000-$25,000	Yes
OppLoans	Not published	129%-195%	$500-$5,000	No
RISE	Not published	About 60%-299% (99%-199% in Texas and Florida)	$500-$5,000	Yes
NetCredit	Not published	34.99%-99.99%	$1,000-$10,000	Yes
Integra Credit	Not published	159%-249% (149%-399% in Utah)	$500-$3,000	Not stated
Personify Financial	Not published	36%-179.5%	$500-$15,000	Yes
Possible Finance	Not published; says it doesn’t use a FICO score	About 136%-249%	$50-$600	Not stated
CashNetUSA	Not published	199%-579%	$100-$3,000	Yes

Two clear tiers sit inside that table. Avant (9.95%-35.99%), Upstart (6.3%-35.99%), and LendingPoint (7.99%-35.99%) — along with Upgrade (7.74%-35.99%), which isn’t in the table above but belongs in this tier — all cap their APR in the mid-30s and are built for fair credit rather than the bottom of the range. Below them is a subprime tier where the math changes completely: OppLoans (129%-195%), NetCredit (34.99%-99.99%), Integra Credit (159%-249%, higher still in Utah), and Personify Financial (36%-179.5%) all run into triple digits at the upper end, and RISE (about 60%-299%) sits in the same territory. A score that clears Avant’s 580 floor or LendingPoint’s typical 640 can be the difference between applying in the first tier and needing the second one.

Mariner Finance and OneMain Financial sit closer to the fair-credit tier on rate (15.99%-35.99% and 11.99%-35.99%) while publishing no minimum score at all, which is part of why they’re worth checking even if a score-driven lender like Avant declines you.

Step 4: Strengthen the application

A few tactics reviewed lenders actually describe can move an application in your favor, beyond the score itself.

A coborrower can help. LendingClub, now Happen Bank, lets you apply with a coborrower, and its review notes that doing so can help you qualify or borrow more — useful if your own income or credit history is thin on its own.

Income and banking history carry real weight everywhere in this range, and several lenders are specific about what they want to see. LendingPoint asks for verifiable annual income of at least $35,000. Avant’s guidance points to verifiable income of at least $1,200 a month. OppLoans and NetCredit both ask for verifiable, recurring income, and OppLoans specifically prefers it to arrive by direct deposit. Possible Finance doesn’t use a credit score at all — it evaluates the bank account you link in its app for income, cash flow, and transaction history instead, and its requirements list recurring income or regular deposits as improving approval odds. Lining up recent pay stubs or bank statements before you apply can shorten the verification step at any of these lenders.

A secured option can also lower your rate if you have a vehicle to put up. OneMain Financial offers a secured personal loan secured by a vehicle no more than 10 years old, which typically carries a lower APR than its unsecured product — though missing payments then puts that vehicle at risk of repossession. Mariner Finance works similarly: applicants who don’t qualify for its lower rates or larger amounts may be asked to pledge a first lien on a vehicle no more than 10 years old, titled in their name and insured.

What a bad-credit loan really costs

Bad-credit pricing runs high across this list, and the easiest way to see what that means in dollars is to amortize one representative loan out in full. Take $3,000 over 24 months at 99% APR — a plausible rate in the range several lenders above quote — with no origination fee attached. An APR already includes the origination fee by definition, so on a loan with no fee at all, we simply amortize the full $3,000 you receive at 99% APR over 24 months.

• Monthly rate (r): 99% / 12 = 0.0825
• (1 + r)^-24: approximately 0.149187
• Monthly payment: P × r / (1 − (1 + r)^-24) = 3000 × 0.0825 / 0.850813 ≈ $290.90
• Total paid over 24 months: $290.90 × 24 ≈ $6,981.56
• Total cost of the loan: $6,981.56 − $3,000 ≈ $3,981.56

For comparison, the same $3,000 principal at a 35.99% APR — near the top of the fair-credit tier rather than the subprime one — over the same 24 months works out to a payment of about $177.13 a month. These are our own amortization figures, not a lender quote. How installment loan interest actually works walks through the formula behind these numbers in more depth.

Alternatives that may cost less

A bad-credit installment loan isn’t always the cheapest way to solve the underlying problem, and it’s worth ruling out a few other paths before you sign anything at triple-digit pricing.

• If what you actually need is a short-term cash gap rather than a new multi-year loan, payday loan alternatives covers lower-cost options worth checking first.
• If the real issue is several existing balances rather than a new expense, credit counseling vs debt management explains how a nonprofit counselor can negotiate a single lower-interest payment plan without a new loan at all.
• If your score is the main thing standing between you and the fair-credit tier, raise your credit score from 600 to 750 covers what tends to move it and how long that realistically takes.

Before you apply

• Pull your own credit report first, so you know your number and what’s dragging it before any lender does.
• Check your rate at a few soft-pull lenders rather than applying blind at just one — it costs nothing in score terms.
• Compare offers by APR and total cost, not the advertised floor of the range, since the lowest tier usually comes with conditions you may not qualify for.
• If you have a vehicle or a creditworthy coborrower, ask whether either lowers your specific offer before you accept the unsecured rate.
• Once you know roughly where your score puts you, start a loan request to see a real offer rather than estimate from a published range.