Considering the difficult economic times we are living things like checking your credit report has become a need, because if you want to apply for any kind of loan, you will be checked by lenders and according to your credit records, specifically your credit score, you will be charged with an interest rate, then question like is an absolutely free credit report useful? remains.
You can get an absolutely free credit report through the big credit bureaus, Equifax, TransUnion and Experian. However, these reports do not inform your credit score, while they are useful for checking inaccuracies and for knowing exactly the items you will want deleted, they are not useful for knowing your current credit score and consequently, how much and how long will take your scoring get improved.
Moreover, you can get these reports just once a year and then, if you are financially active you will want to check your credit more than once a year, specially after take action repairing your credit and you want to know if some items were deleted or not, you could need checking it once a month or at least every three months.
Finally, while credit reporting agencies are not absolutely free, they have a free trial period with very affordable prices, less than $7 in some cases, allowing you getting your credit report plus your credit score and other services that you could be interested like identity theft protection.
These services are useful and cheaper if you are going to use them, meaning by working actively on your credit and scoring.