Cleo Card review: AI-driven credit builder that makes it hard to miss payments

Like the Cleo card, the Capital One Quicksilver Secured card is easier to qualify for than mainstream credit cards and requires a security deposit that acts as your credit limit. You're required to put down $200 for the Quicksilver Secured card, while the Cleo card only requires a $1 minimum deposit. However, Capital One automatically reviews your account to be considered for a higher credit limit in as little as six months.

And while the Cleo card offers no rewards, the Quicksilver Secured card offers cash back on Capital One hotels and rental cars, as well as a flat rate on all other purchases. You can also get your deposit refunded and upgrade to an unsecured card later down the road — an option you don't have with Cleo.

The secured Self Visa card is offered by another small issuer like Cleo, with no other card options to upgrade to. The Self card requires either a $100 minimum security deposit or a linked Credit Builder Account that you fund. This account functions like a credit-builder loan — which adds to your credit mix, a positive credit-scoring factor.

You can get either card with no credit score or credit check. Notably, the Self card charges a $25* annual fee that's waived for the first year. But considering you pay $14.99 per month for a Cleo subscription, you'd still spend less to have the Self card.

While the secured Cleo card doesn't charge a fee, you do have to pay for a monthly Cleo Builder subscription, which is $14.99 per month. You'll get access to the card, a high-yield savings account and budgeting tools.

The Cleo app also offers versions that are free, $2.99 per month and $5.99 per month, but you won't get the secured card.

No, there's no credit check to get the secured Cleo card or any other Cleo products. The platform is meant for beginners, so you can start building credit with no credit history.

Cleo reports your activity to the credit bureaus 14 days after every billing cycle's due date. So as long as you're paying on time and using the card responsibly, you could see improvements to your credit score in as few as six months. And building credit with a secured card can open the door to better loan terms, housing and rewards cards later down the road.

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.