Can I Get a Car Loan With My Credit Score? (500 to 700+ Tiers Explained)

Here's the blunt truth. You can get a car loan with a 500 credit score. You can get one with no credit score at all. The question isn't whether you qualify — it's what that loan will cost you over five or six years.

Auto lending is the most forgiving corner of consumer credit. Unlike an unsecured personal loan, the car itself is collateral. If you stop paying, the lender repossesses it and sells it at auction. That security blanket means subprime and deep-subprime borrowers (scores under 600) originate billions of dollars in auto loans every quarter, according to the [New York Fed's Household Debt and Credit Report](https://www.newyorkfed.org/microeconomics/hhdc).

But forgiveness has a price tag. A borrower with a 720 [FICO score](/glossary/#fico-score) and a borrower with a 560 can walk out of the same dealership with the same car and pay a $9,000+ difference in interest over the life of the loan. The score determines the APR, the APR determines the monthly payment, and the monthly payment determines whether you're still driving that car in year four or watching it get hauled away.

The rest of this guide walks through each score band — 500, 550, 580, 680, 700, and no-score — with real expected APRs, typical down payments, and what to do if you don't like what you see.

Experian's State of the Automotive Finance Market report is the industry standard for this. Experian publishes average APRs by credit tier every quarter based on actual originated loans, not advertised rates. Here's the most recent snapshot for used vehicle financing, which is where most sub-700 borrowers land:

Read that bottom row carefully. A deep-subprime borrower pays roughly three times the interest rate of a super-prime borrower on the same vehicle. On a $20,000 used car financed over 60 months, that's the difference between about $3,750 in total interest and over $11,800.

And APR isn't the only lever. Subprime borrowers almost always face stricter loan-to-value caps, bigger down payment requirements, and shorter term options. A dealer will quote you a "yes" — but the yes comes wrapped in terms the prime borrower never sees.

Yes — but you're in deep-subprime territory, and you need to go in with your eyes open.

At 500, traditional banks and credit unions will almost always decline your application. Your real options are:

• Buy-here-pay-here (BHPH) dealers — the dealer is the lender. Rates often exceed 20% APR, with weekly or bi-weekly payments and GPS kill-switches.
• Subprime specialty lenders — Credit Acceptance, Westlake, and similar lenders that specifically target sub-580 borrowers. Expect APRs in the 18–24% range.
• Credit unions with "second chance" auto programs — the best option in this band if you can find one. Many community credit unions will work with members who have deep-subprime scores if you have steady income and a co-signer.

Expect to put down at least 10–20% of the vehicle price. Expect a loan term of 60 months or less (BHPH is often 36). And expect the dealer to push you toward an older, cheaper car — that's actually the right move. A $12,000 used sedan at 20% APR is survivable. A $28,000 SUV at 20% APR is a financial trap.

Before you sign anything in this tier, read our deeper guide to [personal loans bad credit](/best/best-personal-loans-bad-credit/) to compare the numbers. Sometimes a smaller personal loan plus a cash purchase beats a 20%-APR auto loan.

Between 550 and 580, your options open up noticeably. Most subprime auto lenders — including Capital One Auto Navigator, Ally, and most credit unions — will consider you. You're still paying subprime rates (Experian shows ~18–19% used APR for this band), but you have actual choice.

What lenders look at in addition to the score:

• Debt-to-income ratio ([DTI](/glossary/#debt-to-income)) — most auto lenders cap total DTI at around 45–50% including the new car payment.
• Payment-to-income (PTI) — the car payment alone usually needs to stay under 15–20% of gross monthly income.
• Time at job and residence — two years at each is the subprime gold standard.
• Down payment — 10% minimum, 20% strongly preferred.

At 570 specifically, your best play is pre-approval shopping. Get pre-approved by your credit union and one online subprime lender before walking into a dealership. The dealer's finance office will then try to beat those offers — that's how you use competition to cut your rate. Without a pre-approval in hand, you're negotiating blind, and the dealer knows it.

If you're in this band and have 60–90 days of runway, pulling your score up even 20 points can drop your APR by two or three percentage points. That's where [credit repair companies](/best/best-credit-repair-companies/) and aggressive [credit utilization](/glossary/#credit-utilization) paydowns earn their keep.

Absolutely, and at 680 you're sitting right on the edge of prime territory. You'll get approved essentially everywhere — the question is how close to prime rates you can push.

Experian's data puts 661–780 in the "prime" bucket with used-car APRs averaging around 9.6%. But that band is wide. A 680 will pay meaningfully more than a 760 — usually 1.5 to 2.5 percentage points more. At 680 you should expect roughly 10–12% APR on a used car and 7–9% on a new car as of late 2024.

Three tactics move the needle for a 680 borrower:

1. Credit union membership. Credit union auto rates are structurally lower than bank rates because credit unions are non-profits. The [NCUA's quarterly data](https://www.ncua.gov/analysis/credit-union-corporate-call-report-data) consistently shows credit unions beating bank auto rates by 100+ basis points across every tier.

2. Shop the APR inside a 14-day window. All auto loan [hard inquiries](/glossary/#hard-inquiry) pulled within a 14-day window count as a single inquiry for FICO scoring purposes. Use that window to rate-shop aggressively.

3. Don't finance through the dealer's first offer. Dealers mark up the "buy rate" they get from lenders. A 680 borrower is the prime target for this markup because you'll accept 9% thinking it's reasonable — when the lender actually approved you at 7.5%.

A 680 borrower is also in the sweet spot for [cheapest personal loans](/best/cheapest-personal-loans/) as a comparison lever, especially for used cars under $15,000.

At 700, you're officially prime. Every mainstream lender wants your business. You'll see advertised rates apply to you — those "as low as" numbers the bank puts on billboards are calibrated for borrowers exactly like you.

Expected APRs at 700–720 in the current rate environment:

• New car, 60-month: 6.5%–8.0%
• Used car, 60-month: 8.5%–10.5%
• Manufacturer promotional rates: 0%–3.9% on qualifying new vehicles, subject to tighter score cutoffs (usually 720+) and shorter terms.

At 700, your focus should shift from "will I get approved" to "am I leaving money on the table." The biggest mistakes prime borrowers make:

• Taking the 72- or 84-month term to lower the monthly payment. Longer terms carry higher APRs and push you underwater faster. The CFPB has repeatedly flagged long-term auto loans as a [consumer risk](https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-report-finds-auto-loan-competition-declining-costs-rising-for-consumers/).
• Skipping the credit union comparison. Even a prime borrower saves $500–$1,500 over the life of the loan by using a credit union instead of a bank.
• Financing negative equity from a trade-in. Rolling $4,000 of old-loan balance into the new loan is the fastest way to blow up a prime-rate deal.

A 700 score also unlocks cleaner personal loan pricing, which matters if you're comparing financing structures. See [personal loan lenders](/best/best-personal-loan-lenders/) for the rates you'd actually qualify for.

Yes. No-credit is different from bad-credit, and lenders treat it differently.

A "no score" status (sometimes called credit invisible) means the credit bureaus don't have enough data to generate a FICO or [VantageScore](/glossary/#vantagescore). The CFPB estimates roughly [26 million Americans are credit invisible](https://www.consumerfinance.gov/data-research/research-reports/who-are-the-credit-invisibles/), mostly young adults, recent immigrants, and people who have operated cash-only.

For auto loans specifically, your best paths are:

• Credit union first-time buyer programs. Many credit unions run formal programs that underwrite based on income, employment, and a modest down payment instead of a score. Rates are typically 1–3 points above prime.
• Captive lenders on new cars. Toyota Financial, Honda Financial, and Ford Credit all run first-time buyer tracks with manageable terms if you're buying new.
• Co-signer with established credit. A co-signer with a 700+ score can unlock prime-adjacent rates even if you personally have zero history.

Before financing a car with no score, spend 6–12 months building one. A [secured credit card](/best/best-secured-credit-cards/) or a [credit builder loan](/best/best-credit-builder-loans/) used responsibly will push you from "no score" to a 680+ in under a year — and that single change will save you thousands on the car loan.

"Average credit" usually means a FICO score between 630 and 689 — the near-prime to low-prime band. The FICO Score 8 national average sits around 715, so "average" in the colloquial sense (the middle of the pack) is technically higher than most people assume.

If you're in the 630–689 range, you will get approved for an auto loan from most mainstream lenders. Your APR will land somewhere between 10% and 15% for a used car depending on where exactly you sit in that band. You won't see the 0% promotional offers, and the dealer's finance office will try harder to upsell you on extended warranties and gap insurance — those are high-margin products that are most aggressively pushed at near-prime borrowers.

The average-credit playbook:

• Pre-approve at your credit union before visiting the dealer.
• Put 10% down minimum.
• Keep the term at 60 months or less.
• Refuse the dealer's first APR quote and ask them to beat your pre-approval.
• Say no to everything the F&I office tries to add after you've agreed on the price.

If your score is sitting in this band because of one specific issue — a [charge-off](/glossary/#charge-off), a [collection account](/glossary/#collection-account), or maxed-out cards — fixing that one thing before applying can move you into the clean prime tier and save you thousands. If you're not sure what's dragging your score, a solid [credit monitoring service](/best/best-credit-monitoring-services/) will show you the factor breakdown in plain English. From there, the path to a better rate is mechanical: know your score, fix the biggest drag, then shop lenders like your wallet depends on it — because it does.