Experian Intelliscore vs. PAYDEX vs. Equifax: Which Business Score Actually Matters

A business owner pulls their Experian Business report, sees a respectable 72, and assumes their credit is in good shape. Then a supplier declines favorable terms, citing a D&B file with almost no trade history. Then an SBA lender runs a pre-screen and comes back with a FICO SBSS number nobody had heard of before that call. None of these outcomes are contradictions or errors — they are four different scoring systems, built by four different organizations, using data that does not automatically flow between them.

This confuses more owners than almost any other part of business credit, and it costs them leverage: they optimize for the one score they know how to check, while a lender is looking at a score they have never seen.

Four business risk scores, four different scales

Each bureau publishes its own range. Higher is always lower-risk, but the numbers are not interchangeable across systems.

Each bar spans that bureau's own full published range. Read within a row, never across rows.

View the data as a table

Score	Range	General low-risk read
Experian Intelliscore Plus	1–100	~75–100
D&B PAYDEX	1–100	80–100
Equifax Business Credit Risk Score	101–992	700+
FICO SBSS	0–300	Lender-set; SBA 7(a) small-loan pre-screens have cited 155–165+

What is Experian Intelliscore Plus and how is it built?

Experian's business credit score, branded Intelliscore Plus, runs on a 1-to-100 scale where a higher number means lower predicted risk. Experian reports the model draws on more than 800 variables, grouped roughly into:

• Payment history and credit habits. Number of trade experiences on file, outstanding balances, payment timeliness, and utilization trends over time.
• Public records. The recency, frequency, and dollar amount of liens, judgments, and bankruptcies attached to the business.
• Business demographics. Years on file, Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) code, and company size — industry risk profiles differ, and Experian's model accounts for that.

Unlike PAYDEX, which is built entirely from Dun & Bradstreet's own trade-experience database, Experian's model is described as more comprehensive in scope — and for some Experian products, owner or guarantor-level information can factor into the picture, blurring the line between the business file and the founder's personal history in a way PAYDEX never does.

Three bureaus, three databases, three formulas. A business can rank differently on each one and be correct on all three at once — the systems are simply not measuring identical inputs.

How does PAYDEX compare, and where does it differ structurally?

We've covered PAYDEX in depth elsewhere, but the structural contrast matters here: PAYDEX is Dun & Bradstreet's proprietary 1-to-100 score, built exclusively from Trade Experiences — records vendors voluntarily report to D&B describing how promptly an invoice was paid. A score of 80 means paid on the due date; 100 means paid roughly 30 days early, on average. It ignores personal credit entirely and requires no owner data because it is not designed to use any.

That single-source design is both PAYDEX's strength and its blind spot. It is a clean, dollar-weighted measure of payment behavior specifically — but a business with strong trade payment history and zero public-record issues can still carry a mediocre Experian or Equifax score if those bureaus are picking up different, less flattering data that never touched D&B's system.

What does the Equifax business risk score measure?

Equifax Business publishes more than one product, and the naming trips people up. The core Business Credit Risk Score runs on a 101-to-992 scale, predicting the likelihood a business becomes 90 or more days delinquent on a payment obligation. Businesses scoring above roughly 700 are generally read as low-risk, the 500–699 range as moderate-risk, and scores under 500 as flagging significant risk.

Equifax also offers a separate Business Failure Score, scored on a 1,000-to-1,880 scale, that estimates the probability a business fails or becomes severely delinquent within the next 12 months — here a lower number signals higher risk, the inverse framing of the risk score, which is exactly the kind of detail that trips up an owner glancing at two Equifax numbers side by side and assuming they work the same way. A separate Equifax Payment Index, scored 0–100, tracks payment timeliness specifically — conceptually closer to PAYDEX, with scores of 90–100 reflecting timely or early payment and scores under 80 reflecting late payment of 30 or more days.

Where does FICO SBSS fit, and what score do SBA lenders need?

The FICO Small Business Scoring Service (SBSS) is a different animal from the three bureau scores above. It runs 0 to 300, and it is not a single-bureau product — it blends business bureau data (often pulling from D&B, Experian, and/or Equifax feeds) with the primary owner's personal credit file into one composite number designed specifically for small-business loan underwriting.

SBA 7(a) loans have historically used an SBSS pre-screen for smaller loan amounts to speed up underwriting. The minimum threshold has moved: a figure of 155 was commonly cited for 7(a) small loans, then the required minimum was reported raised to 165 in a 2025 policy update. More recently, the SBA has been reducing its own mandatory reliance on a single SBSS cutoff for certain loan categories, which means individual lenders now have more room to set their own internal thresholds — some accept scores in the 160–180 range, others hold the line at 180 or higher, and scores of 220+ are widely treated as comfortably low-risk regardless of lender. SBA's own 7(a) program page does not publish a fixed SBSS number, describing eligibility instead in terms of general creditworthiness — confirm the exact figure your specific lender is applying before you assume any published threshold still holds.

FICO SBSS: the moving SBA 7(a) small-loan threshold

The minimum score commonly cited for SBA 7(a) small-loan pre-screening has shifted upward, and mandatory reliance on it is loosening.

As of March 2026, SBA has moved away from mandating a single lender-wide SBSS cutoff for some loan categories, so lender-set internal minimums now vary. Verify the specific figure with the lender you are applying through, not this chart.

Which score should you actually be tracking?

The honest answer is more than one, and the right mix depends on what you are trying to do next:

• Applying for trade credit or a supplier account? PAYDEX and Experian Intelliscore Plus are the two most commonly pulled by vendors deciding whether to extend net terms.
• Applying for an SBA-backed loan under roughly $500,000? Ask your lender directly whether they pre-screen with FICO SBSS and what internal minimum they apply — do not assume a number you read somewhere still governs their decision.
• Bidding on a contract or vetting a partnership? Larger counterparties sometimes pull a full D&B report, and PAYDEX sits inside it as the payment-behavior line.
• Worried about a lien or judgment quietly capping your score? That risk shows up hardest on Experian and Equifax, since both weigh public records directly into the number — see credit monitoring for LLCs for why business files carry weaker dispute rights than personal ones and why a stale filing can sit uncorrected for months.

Because none of these bureaus share data with each other by default, a serious credit-building sequence has to open trade lines and monitor files across more than one system rather than assuming one strong score covers the rest. That full sequence is covered in how to build business credit, and the first mechanical step — making sure the vendors you sign up with actually report anywhere at all — is covered in net-30 vendor accounts that actually report.

A practical way to check where you actually stand

1. Pull your own file from each bureau you can access — Dun & Bradstreet, Experian Business, and Equifax Business all sell direct access to your own report; there is no single free source for business credit the way there is for consumer credit.
2. Confirm your D-U-N-S Number and business identifiers match everywhere you transact — legal name, address, and EIN mismatches fragment your file across multiple bureau records instead of building one coherent one.
3. Ask any lender or SBA program you're applying through which specific score they pull before you spend time optimizing a different one. A strong PAYDEX score does nothing for an SBSS pre-screen that weighs your personal credit.
4. Address public records first if any exist. Liens and judgments drag Experian and Equifax scores harder than routine late payments, and they are frequently fixable through payoff and formal release — see our guide to what a UCC-1 blanket lien actually blocks if a filing is the culprit.
5. If your business is early-stage and has no reportable trade history yet, a secured business credit product can establish payment history faster than waiting on vendor net-terms alone — see secured business credit.

The takeaway

“My business credit is good” is not a verifiable statement until you name the bureau. Experian Intelliscore Plus, D&B PAYDEX, Equifax's risk scores, and FICO SBSS each answer a slightly different question, on a different scale, from different underlying data. The businesses that get the best terms are not the ones with one flawless score — they are the ones who know which score their next lender or supplier is actually going to pull, and who have built a reportable history across more than one bureau instead of gambling on just one.

Important: MidBank is not a bank, a financial institution, or a financial advisor. We are an advocate and ISO affiliate that connects businesses to vetted third-party providers. This article is general information published on July 20, 2026, not legal, tax, or financial advice — rules and rates change, and your situation is specific to you. Confirm details with the primary sources linked above and with a qualified tax or legal professional before acting.