Prosper® Card review: Credit-building with just the basics

The Capital One Platinum Credit Card is one of the best credit-building cards because it’s simple, affordable and doesn’t have any extra frills to stand in your way of building credit. Like the Prosper Card, it offers credit limit increases and you can take advantage of free financial education tools. And while it has a high APR like the Prosper Card and doesn’t offer any rewards, you won't pay an annual fee (See Rates & Fees).

Additionally, the Capital One Platinum has a few perks that give it an edge over the Prosper Card. For instance, you’ll have access to CreditWise to monitor your growing score, which can come in handy when strategizing how you’ll keep building your credit.

The Card with No Credit Check - The Secured Self Visa® Credit Card* is a fairly unconventional approach to building credit, but it can be a more aggressive way to grow your score and establish a credit history. You’ll open a credit-builder account and a secured card linked to that account with Self, establishing a nuanced credit mix — a key scoring factor. You’ll need to pay an annual fee to access the Self card, but it's lower than the Prosper Card and a diverse credit mix can help fast track your way to good credit.

Although it will help you build your score fast, the Self account and card is a complicated product compared to the Prosper Card. If you value simplicity and can’t spare too much time and patience learning the complexities of Self’s product, it’s worth opting for the simpler route so you won’t get lost on your credit-building journey.

This card can help you build credit with a high credit limit, low fees and no extra frills. Its credit limit increases can provide access to more credit over time, making it an especially good option if you can keep your credit utilization ratio low or for big spenders who need a high limit.

If you’re getting your first credit card and you aren’t a student, the Prosper Card can give you access to a decent credit limit. It’s also a card that’s free of distractions, so you won’t have to worry about maximizing your rewards categories. All of the benefits of this card are baked into using it routinely.

A student or credit-building card’s cost has a large influence on its overall score. 

Students already face a ton of expenses, so extra card costs are best avoided if possible, and people with limited or damaged credit tend often find the cards they can qualify for are much pricier than traditional credit cards designed for people with a good or better credit score. 

We compare a card’s total cost, including any annual fees, account activation fees, monthly fees and more against the total cost of other cards in this category and assign each card a score based on its affordability. We also factor rewards-earning potential into our assessment of a credit-building card’s total cost, subtracting a card’s expected earnings from the sum of its fees. 

To get a sense of a card’s rewards-earning potential, we estimate its average annual rewards rate and average annual earnings based on the most popular spending categories (as covered in the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer spending report). 

However, we use a slightly lower spending assumption ($300 per month or $3,600 per year) to estimate average earnings, assuming students and credit-builders will start out with a lower credit limit, will want to keep credit utilization low and will focus primarily on small purchases they can easily pay off.

Given the many costs students face — from textbooks to laptops — the presence of an introductory APR on purchases or balance transfers also plays a role in a student card’s score.

A card’s APR is also a major factor in its credit-building score. Each card’s average APR is compared against the average APR of other cards in the category, and the cards with lower-than-average APRs receive a higher rating. 

Though high APRs are hard to avoid when you’re just starting out or working on your score, credit-builders should strive for as low an APR as possible since they’re likely to either be new to managing cards or trying to establish better financial habits and avoid falling into debt.

Along with a credit-building card’s cost, our rating system takes into account how easy the card makes it to build credit. To assess this, we evaluate its credit limit potential and minimum deposit requirement.

Unsecured cards with a high starting credit limit and secured cards that let you put down a large deposit and get a matching high credit limit will score the highest according to our “Ease of building credit” rubric and are more likely to appear on our list. 

This is because a high credit limit can make it much easier to keep your credit utilization low, a primary credit-building factor that makes up 30 percent of your FICO credit score. 

Secured cards have a slight advantage in this category since the maximum credit limit on a secured card tends to be much higher than the typical starting credit limit on an unsecured card that’s available with a bad or fair credit score. However, unsecured credit-building cards have the upper hand in another key aspect of building credit: accessibility. 

Cards that carry no or a low deposit requirement can also receive a high score according to our “Ease of building credit” rubric since these cards offer a lower barrier to entry than secured cards that require you to put up hundreds of dollars in an upfront deposit. 

Indeed, some users may prefer to pay a non-refundable $50 annual fee while they work on their credit score than tie up hundreds in a refundable security deposit.

We also evaluate each card’s benefits based on how useful they are for students or someone looking to build a positive credit history and save money on everyday spending. 

We consider the inclusion of a rewards program, student-centric perks and access to your credit score or a credit monitoring service of prime importance, along with the ability to prequalify for the card with only a soft credit pull and a clear path to increase your credit limit or graduate to an unsecured or full-fledged rewards card.

Cards that include these benefits are likely to score higher according to our credit-building card scoring rubric.

No. Applying for Prosper won’t impact your credit score and you can see your estimated offer before opening your account. You can either decide not to open an account or accept the offer. If you accept, then your score may be affected.

The Prosper Card is accepted at ATMs that accept Mastercard. Prosper also won’t charge you to withdraw money, but you may need to pay third-party ATM fees.

The Prosper Card doesn’t require a security deposit, making it an affordable option for anyone hoping to open a new credit card and start building credit.