April 19, 2025 · 14 mins read
Santhosh Kumar
Enhancing your CIBIL score (India's most widely used credit score) is similar to losing weight – requiring time and regular effort. Most people are curious to know how long it takes to enhance CIBIL score, or ask questions such as how many days will it take to raise CIBIL score if they settle a debt or pay credit card dues. The honest answer is that there’s no instant fix. Depending on your starting point and financial habits, it could take anywhere from a few months to a year or more to see a significant jump in your CIBIL score.
First, understand how long it takes to improve your CIBIL score and what determines your score. CIBIL (similarly, other credit score systems) considers a few elements of your credit behaviour. The key factors are:
Payment History: This is the #1 contributor to your CIBIL score. It indicates whether you pay your EMIs (loan instalments) and credit card dues on time. Any delayed payment missed EMI, or loan default considerably lowers your score. Payment history contributes to a significant chunk (about 30-35%) of your score.
Credit Utilization Ratio: The amount of credit you use as a percentage of your overall available limit. Put simply, if you have a credit card with a ₹1,00,000 limit and you typically owe ₹50,000, your utilization is 50%. Excessive credit utilization (utilizing a high percentage of your limits) hurts your CIBIL score.
Length of Credit History (Credit Age): A longer credit history (several years of having credit cards or loans) generally boosts your score because it gives more data on your repayment behaviour. This is why old accounts (such as that very first credit card you received) are worth their weight in gold – they indicate a long history. If you don't have much credit history (e.g., you just opened your first card a few months ago), your score will at first be low or "NA/0" due to lack of history.
Credit Mix (Credit Types): It's better to have a combination of credit (say, a home loan, a car loan, and a credit card) than to have one type of credit. A balanced mix of secured loans (such as auto or home loans) and unsecured credit (such as personal loans or credit cards) indicates that you can manage various credit responsibly. It's a lesser factor, but it helps. If you have only credit cards and no loans, or vice versa, your score might be slightly lower than someone with a balanced credit mix.
New Credit and Inquiries: Every time you apply for a loan or credit card, the lender makes a hard inquiry on your credit report. Too many such inquiries in a short time can hurt your CIBIL score, which might indicate you're "credit hungry" or desperate for credit. Additionally, opening several new accounts around the same time can reduce the average age of your credit history. It's best to space out credit applications. Checking your own score (soft inquiry) does not affect the score, so feel free to monitor it regularly.
In short, the secret to a good CIBIL score is to pay on time, keep your credit card balances low, have some old credit lines, have a balanced credit portfolio, and don't apply for too much credit too often. All these combine to make up your score and affect how fast your score will improve when you make good changes.
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Not all credit situations are the same. Some fortunate individuals may have their scores improve in a matter of months, while others may take a year with minimal improvement. These are some circumstances when it takes longer to improve your CIBIL score:
After Major Negative Events: Having a loan default, settlement, or write-off on your credit report is a serious red flag. These occurrences significantly reduce your score. Sadly, these are on your report for years (usually 6-7 years in India ). While you can begin to slowly improve your score from the event once, the presence of a major default means your score is being dragged. You can only see improvement significantly after a longer duration (since lenders will consider your profile cautiously until that record ages).
Very Low Starting Score (Poor Credit History): If your current CIBIL score is very low (say in the 500s or low 600s) due to multiple issues – maybe you've had several late payments, accounts in collections, and high debts – then climbing out of that hole takes time. Improving from 600 to 750 is a more significant leap than, say, from 700 to 750. The lower your starting score, the more months of consistent improvement you'll likely need. It's realistic to expect 9-12 months or more of effort to go from a bad score to a good score if multiple issues need addressing.
Thin Credit History or New Credit User: If you have little credit history (for instance, you're young and just opened up credit lines in recent times), you may find that your score doesn't shift rapidly just because the scoring system lacks sufficient information on you at the moment. If you have less than 6 months of credit history, you may not even have a CIBIL score (it might be reported as "NA" or 0). Then, it would take at least a few months (most often 6+ months) of being responsible about using credit to build up a good score. So getting better from "no score or 0 score" to a good score will require at least half a year of waiting.
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Continuing High Debt Levels: Improvement will be slow if you persistently carry a high credit card or loan balance. For example, you have an enormous credit card debt that you're slowly paying off. Until your debt decreases considerably, your credit use is still high, keeping your score low. Even if you never pay a bill late, having a large debt will reduce the score. The score will only tick up slowly as your debt decreases each month – it may take you many months to notice a significant difference.
Frequent credit applications: If you're constantly applying for several credit cards or loans over a short period, each inquiry (and the resulting hard inquiry) can shave a few points from your score. Opening new accounts also decreases your average account age. If you're applying this frequently, your score could plateau or even decrease. To improve, you'd have to stop applying for a while and let your existing accounts age with good payment records. That "cooling-off" period could be a few months to allow your score to recover from the impact of too many inquiries.
Mistakes on Your Report: Occasionally, it isn't your fault – a mistake on your credit report (such as a loan wrongly noted as unpaid or the wrong person's credit information spliced into your report) can keep your score lower. Getting a mistake out by disputing it can take several months. While it remains, your score won't be updated to the good news. Therefore, if an error is to blame, it may take longer simply because of the time required to correct it.
The more severe or the more negative your credit history is, the longer it generally takes to improve. Small things (such as a single high credit card balance) can be quickly repaired, and your score will rebound in a few weeks. Big things (such as defaults or multiple delinquencies) demand a longer-game strategy and a lot of patience.
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The question most asked is how many days it will take to raise the CIBIL score if you do something. Though there isn't any fixed number of days for anyone, we can provide some common timelines for different strategies. Let's analyze a few situations and how quickly each activity could reflect in your score:
Paying Credit Card Balances in Full: If you carry a heavy credit card balance and can pay it off (or significantly reduce it) this month, you're working on credit utilization – one of the quickest areas to deliver improvement. How many days to notice the impact? Typically, 30-60 days. If your billing cycle closes and the issuer updates CIBIL on the new low balance, your score may jump as early as the following month's update. For instance, settle a card in the middle of the month, and after around a month or two, you may notice your score increasing because your utilization fell. Most users experience a significant increase in their score within 1-2 months of paying off credit card dues.
Lowering Credit Utilization (Not necessarily paying off in full): Even if you can't pay off all debt, lowering your card balances from, for example, 80% of the limit to below 30% can take effect quickly. Again, you're talking about one billing cycle (about a month), after which the new balances are reported. Within a month or two, the score should indicate this good change.
Paying Loan EMIs Timely Regularly: If you were skipping EMIs or postponing payments and beginning timely payments, the impact on your score is slow. There's no huge big jump at first for a single timely payment, but each month you make a timely payment, your score no longer takes those negative knocks and will begin to heal. You may notice a gradual increase after 3-6 months of regular, timely payments. If you did have an overdue loan which you brought up to date, great – the fact that it no longer shows as delinquent will assist your score, and in a few months the report will indicate it as "current" instead of overdue. However, any prior late mark lingers for a bit. In most cases, 90+ days of consistent payments on time will begin to make up for past late marks.
After Closing a Loan (for example, completing a Personal Loan): This one can be a mixed bag. When you pay off a loan, the account will close. The closure will be reported within 30-45 days after the last payment. If that loan was your sole instalment loan, sometimes your score may fall a few points (since you lost some credit mix and an open account). But if you had other lines of credit, closing a loan you managed well is typically even or marginally beneficial in the long term. Don't worry if there's a slight temporary dip that month – within a few months; the score should stabilize or even go up because you've lowered your overall level of debt.
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Fixing a Mistake on Your Credit Report: Your report incorrectly reflected an unpaid loan. You challenge it and have it corrected. After being corrected, how quickly will your score improve? Probably by the next reporting cycle after the correction – so again, on the 30-45 days order. The error has to be fixed; after that, the negative mark is erased, and your score calculation will leap to where it should be.
Taking a New Credit Card or Small Loan to Establish Credit: If you have little credit history, one approach is to take a secured credit card (against a fixed deposit) or a small consumer loan and begin paying it on time. How many days for a boost? This is slow and steady – you may not get a score for the first few months if you had none, and it takes around 6 months of use to get a good starting score. Once you have it, good continued use will further enhance it. Don't look for a large score in days – think about months. For example, use a freshly secured credit card responsibly for 6 months and jump from no score to perhaps a score of 700. Every new month and fresh, on-time payment will then move that higher.
Avoiding New Queries: Refusing to make new credit requests simply won't bring your score up, but it avoids unnecessary decreases. If you are used to making multiple inquiries, this alone will guarantee your score is no longer dragged down constantly. In a series of months, with older inquiries that fall off over time, your score can recover by itself. The impact of hard queries typically decreases within 3-6 months and falls off altogether in 2 years.
So, responding to "how many days it will take to boost CIBIL score" depends on the action: debt repayment can have an impact within as soon as 30 days, and establishing new credit or reversing bad credit might take several months. In general, most positive behaviors begin to reflect by 30-60 days in some manner. Yet, the impact of the score boost may be minimal initially and develop over time with continuous behavior.
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It takes time to increase your CIBIL score, not just a few minutes. By this point, you should know how long it will take to enhance a CIBIL score and what determines it. We've discovered that the time span can be as little as a few months to make small changes or as much as two years to make big changes, particularly after severe credit problems. The most important thing throughout is consistency, good credit behaviour and patience. Improving a CIBIL score is possible for all, but it's not immediate. Avoid shortcuts and adhere to the tried and tested methods: pay your dues, use your debt sensibly, and watch your credit behaviour.
If you settle a high credit card debt, your CIBIL score will likely improve in 30 to 60 days, depending on when your bank has reported it.
Following a missed EMI, regular on-time payments for the subsequent 3 to 6 months can improve your CIBIL score over time.
A loan default may take 6 months to 2 years to recover from. How long it takes to improve your CIBIL score after default depends on your future credit behaviour.
If you pay all your bills on a regular basis, it usually takes 90-180 days before you can start observing a positive trend in your CIBIL scores.
After a reporting mistake is rectified, your CIBIL score can be updated in 30 to 45 days.
If you lower your credit card spending to less than 30%, you may expect to see a better CIBIL score in 30–60 days.
Depending upon various factors, it takes how many months to significantly improve your CIBIL score when you want serious improvement (say a 100+ point increment), but be prepared to work hard over 6–12 months.
Depending on your credit management, it may take 180 to 365 days or more to shift from a poor CIBIL score to a good one.
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