About PlainCredit

Companies tracked

3,800+

financial firms in CFPB extract

Complaint records

14M+

federal database since 2011

States covered

52

all US states + territories

Debt collectors

656

profiles with FDCPA detail

Our Mission

PlainCredit exists because consumers deserve transparent, accessible information about the financial companies they entrust with their money and personal data. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau collects millions of complaints from real consumers, yet navigating the raw database requires technical skill and considerable patience. Most consumers never see the patterns buried in this data.

We believe that complaint data collected at public expense belongs to the public in a form they can actually use. PlainCredit transforms over 14 million CFPB complaint records into searchable company profiles, state comparisons, and trend analyses that anyone can understand. Our goal is to help consumers make more informed decisions about which financial companies to trust by showing the data that companies would prefer you not see.

We do not rank companies on a single score, because complaint volume without context is misleading. Instead, we present complaint counts, response rates, dispute rates, and issue categories so readers can judge for themselves. A company with many complaints but excellent resolution rates tells a different story than one with fewer complaints but poor responses.

Our Data Sources

CFPB Consumer Complaint Database

The primary data source for PlainCredit is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Consumer Complaint Database, a public dataset containing over 14 million consumer complaints filed against financial companies since 2011. The database covers credit reporting, debt collection, mortgages, credit cards, student loans, bank accounts, and other financial products.

Each complaint record includes the company name, product category, issue description, company response type, whether the consumer disputed the response, and geographic information (state and ZIP code). The CFPB publishes this data under a commitment to transparency, making it available at consumerfinance.gov.

Federal Reserve G.19 Consumer Credit Report

Credit card interest rate data comes from the Federal Reserve's G.19 Statistical Release, which tracks commercial bank credit card interest rates over time. This provides national-level APR trends that help contextualize the consumer complaint data. Data is published at federalreserve.gov/releases/g19.

How We Process the Data

We transform raw CFPB data into accessible company profiles through the following steps:

  • Ingestion and deduplication: We download the full CFPB complaint dataset and process each record, normalizing company names and resolving subsidiaries to their parent companies where the CFPB has made those connections.
  • Company profile aggregation: For each company, we calculate total complaint counts, breakdown by product category and issue type, company response rates (timely response percentage), dispute rates, and year-over-year trends.
  • State-level analysis: Complaints are aggregated by state and normalized per 100,000 population to enable meaningful geographic comparisons. Some states have higher complaint rates due to population size, financial industry concentration, or consumer awareness.
  • Minimum threshold: Companies with fewer than 10 total complaints are excluded from profiles to avoid misleading displays based on tiny samples. This threshold balances comprehensiveness with statistical reliability.
  • Interest rate tracking: Federal Reserve G.19 data is processed into time-series format showing quarterly average APRs for commercial bank credit cards, enabling consumers to see how rates have changed over time.

Data Currency

PlainCredit currently displays CFPB complaint data through early 2026, covering complaints filed from 2011 to present. The CFPB updates its complaint database daily, and we refresh our database periodically to include the latest submissions.

Federal Reserve G.19 credit card rate data is released monthly, with quarterly averages calculated from monthly figures. We update rate data within 30 days of each new release. There is typically a 30-60 day lag between the reporting period and data availability.

Editorial Independence

Content on PlainCredit is compiled by our editorial team. Raw data from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Consumer Complaint Database and the Federal Reserve G.19 Consumer Credit Report is transformed into readable company and state profiles by our continuous editorial pipeline, validated against the source before publication. The PlainCredit editorial team, operating under Kiznis Studio, is responsible for editorial standards, methodology, and corrections.

We do not accept payment, sponsorship, or promoted placement from banks, credit card issuers, debt collectors, credit-reporting agencies, or any covered financial company. Our only revenue source is contextual display advertising served by Google AdSense — advertisers do not influence which companies we cover or how we present complaint data, and they do not receive preferential placement.

Limitations & Disclaimers

PlainCredit is an informational resource. Consumer complaint data should be one factor among many when evaluating a financial company. Every situation is different.

  • Complaint volume ≠ quality: A large company like a major bank will naturally receive more complaints than a small credit union, simply due to customer base size. Complaint counts alone do not indicate how well a company treats its customers.
  • Unverified complaints: The CFPB publishes complaints as submitted by consumers. The Bureau does not verify the accuracy of each complaint. Companies have the opportunity to respond, but the consumer's account may contain inaccuracies.
  • Selection bias: Not all dissatisfied consumers file complaints. Tech-savvy consumers in states with strong consumer protection cultures may file at higher rates, inflating complaint counts for companies popular in those states.
  • No financial advice: PlainCredit does not provide financial, tax, or investment advice. Complaint patterns can inform your research, but they should not be the sole basis for choosing or avoiding a financial company. Consult a qualified financial advisor for personal guidance.

Contact

Questions, corrections, or feedback? Email us at hello@plaincredit.com.

We welcome:

  • Questions about data sources or methodology
  • Reports of apparent data errors or company misidentification
  • Suggestions for additional features or data dimensions
  • Media and research inquiries

PlainCredit is published by ", a data intelligence company that builds free, public-interest data portals.

Editorial Standards

PlainCredit follows transparent editorial standards. Drafts of explanatory prose, FAQs, and contextual sections are written by our editorial team to accelerate first-pass writing, but every published page is reviewed by a human editor before deployment for accuracy, framing, and source attribution. Underlying data — CFPB complaint records, Federal Reserve G.19 series, FDIC call-report extracts, and debt-collector regulator filings — is loaded directly from the upstream agency feed without rewriting.

Where statistical claims appear, we link to the originating dataset row or release. Methodology and known limitations are documented in our methodology page. We do not generate synthetic complaint records, fabricate company quotes, or infer numerical values that the upstream sources do not publish.

If you spot a factual error, an outdated citation, or believe a profile misrepresents your company, contact us via the contact page. Corrections are logged and the modified date on the affected page is updated.