Guide

What to Charge for Credit Repair

Last updated September 10, 2026

Almost everything written about credit repair pricing answers the wrong question. It tells consumers what they should expect to pay. If you are the one sending the invoice, that is only useful as a ceiling.

This is the other side of it: what the market actually bears, which billing models survive CROA, and the arithmetic that decides whether thirty clients is a business or a second job.

If you have not set the business up yet, start with how to start a credit repair business — pricing is a decision you make after you know what your state requires of you.

What the market charges

Published consumer-facing pricing clusters tighter than you might expect. Two independent surveys of the larger national firms land in roughly the same place:

Money's roundup of national providers puts typical monthly service between $50 and $200, with some firms pairing a lower monthly fee to a larger first payment. Credit Info Center's survey of the top five firms found initial fees of $0 to $119.95 and monthly fees of $59 to $119.95.

Two things follow from that.

The national firms are not the price to beat. They spend heavily on acquisition and support call centres. A solo operator with twenty clients has a completely different cost base and does not need to sit at the top of that band.

Nobody is winning on price. The spread between the cheapest and the dearest national provider is under 2×, and the cheap end is not visibly taking the market. Competing by undercutting a $59 monthly fee is a race toward a business that cannot afford the time each client actually takes.

The three billing models, and what the law says about each

This is where pricing stops being a marketing decision. CROA's advance-fee provision is short and unforgiving:

No credit repair organization may charge or receive any money or other valuable consideration for the performance of any service which the credit repair organization has agreed to perform for any consumer before such service is fully performed.

Everything below follows from that one sentence.

Setup fee at signup — not lawful

A fee taken when the client signs, before any work has been done, is the textbook version of what the statute prohibits. This is the single most common way new operators get themselves in trouble, usually because a course taught them to "collect the setup fee to qualify the lead."

If you need a first-month payment to make the model work, it has to come after the first month's work, not at the signature.

Monthly, billed in arrears — lawful, and the common shape

Monthly subscriptions are fine, provided each charge covers the month you have already worked. Credit expert John Ulzheimer, quoted in Credit Info Center's survey, frames the two obligations plainly: disclose in writing what the monthly payment buys, and be able to demonstrate the services were fully provided during that previous month.

That second half is a record-keeping requirement in disguise. If a client disputes a charge — or a regulator asks — "we billed on the 1st" is not an answer. What was sent, on what date, to which bureau, is.

Pay per deletion — also lawful, with a different risk

Per-item pricing is compliant for the same reason arrears billing is: the fee lands only after a bureau confirms a specific item came off. That confirmation is about as clean a "fully performed" trigger as the statute allows, and the money moves after it.

The problem with per-deletion is not legal, it is incentive. Billing per removal pays you more the more items come off — including items that were accurate and should have stayed. If you use this model, the discipline has to be built in: your review decides what is disputable before anyone looks at what it pays.

A note on a confusing term. "Pay for deletion" also describes something entirely different — asking a debt collector to remove a tradeline in exchange for payment. That is a separate practice with its own problems, and it is not what per-item pricing means here. Do not let a client conflate the two.

The arithmetic that actually decides this

Pick a number by working backwards from the time a client costs you. The figures below are illustrative, not survey data — replace them with your own once you have tracked a month.

Say a client takes roughly 90 minutes a month: pulling and reading the updated report, deciding the round, generating and sending letters, logging results, and answering one client message.

At $79/month, thirty clients is $2,370 a month for about 45 hours of work — before software, insurance, postage and the hours you spend finding the next client. That is roughly $50 an hour of billable time, and materially less once unbillable time is counted honestly.

Which surfaces the actual lever: the 90 minutes, not the $79. Cutting the per-client hour is what changes the business, and it is the only variable that scales. Raising prices moves the number once; reducing per-client time moves it every month, for every client you ever add.

Practical rules

• Bill in arrears, always. It is the compliant shape and it removes a whole category of risk for a day or two of cash-flow timing.
• Price for the report in front of you. A file with four disputable items is not the same job as one with twenty-two. A flat price across both means overcharging one client and losing money on the other.
• Put the total cost in the contract. CROA requires the terms and the total of all payments in writing, so a price you cannot state plainly is a price you cannot legally charge.
• Do not discount to close. In a market where the spread is under 2×, a discount signals that the first number was invented. Adjust scope instead.
• Raise prices on new clients only. Existing clients keep their rate. It costs you little and it is the difference between a business people recommend and one they warn each other about.

What you cannot do at any price

No guaranteed outcomes. No "we remove anything." No promise that accurate negative information can come off, because it cannot. And no fee before the work that fee pays for has actually been done.

Those are not positioning choices. They are the floor, and every operator who lasts in this business treats them as fixed before deciding anything else.

This guide is general information about how the credit-repair industry is regulated. It is not legal advice, and it is not a substitute for an attorney who knows the rules in your state. ScoreBoost Pro is a software platform — it does not provide credit-repair services.