Aura Credit Monitoring Review 2025: Identity Protection That Monitors Your Credit, Finances, and More

You may be used to free credit monitoring services like Credit Karma, but Aura includes features the free ones don’t, like automatic credit lock, 3-bureau credit reporting, and identity theft protection insurance. In fact, Aura is one of the best credit monitoring tools around.

We subscribed to Aura to test its monitoring features, see how well it removes data from brokers across the internet, and decide if it’s easy to use. Right off the bat, we noticed that Aura’s approach is more security focused because it doesn’t offer credit building tools available.

Even still, Aura offers advanced credit monitoring features like dark web and data breach monitoring and real-time alerts of any credit report changes.

If you’re looking for identity theft protection that includes insights into your credit, Aura may be perfect for you. Read on to see what we liked and what we felt could be improved.

Aura review at a glance

Price	$9.00–$30.00/mo
Free plan	No
Financial account monitoring	Yes
FICO® score	No
Credit score	Yes — Equifax, Experian, TransUnion
Credit score update frequency	Monthly
Credit report	Yes — Equifax, Experian, TransUnion
Credit report update frequency	Annually
Credit lock	Yes — Experian
Credit analysis	Yes
Credit building	No
Extras	Included with all Aura plans: Antivirus, password manager, ID theft protection, ID theft insurance, data removal, ad blocker, basic VPN, and more Family plan only: AI spam call protection, parental controls, Safe Gaming features
Learn more	Get Aura Read Our Aura Review

We last tested Aura on March 3rd, 2025.

Our experience

Signing up for Aura was a breeze. We entered our information, connected our PayPal account, and were in our portal in less than 3 minutes. It took a little over an hour for Aura to grab our credit information, which we felt was reasonable.

Aura immediately went to work asking for our data to be removed from data broker sites. After 24 hours, it had already requested removal from several places, and we felt confident it would continue to remove more. We liked that the alerts showed up in the main dashboard.

We uploaded our bank account information into the financial monitoring section. One positive is that Aura uses Plaid, a secure service for financial accounts, to connect your bank to its monitoring portal. The extra security made us feel confident in sharing such personal information.

We also liked that we could set alerts for transactions over a certain limit. If any purchase is made over $200, Aura will let us know so we can check it quickly. While $200 is the standard Aura starts you with, you can customize these alerts any way you like to keep an eye on your finances and spending.

Overall, we were pleased with our Aura experience. It’s not wildly different from other credit monitoring services we’ve tried, but it does its job well. We liked the integration with Plaid and the monitoring alerts, as well as extras like antivirus and a password manager. 

Plus, we like that Aura sends a weekly report via email and in the dashboard of what it's scanned, making it a true "set-and-forget" service. 

Aura prices and subscriptions

Aura runs between $9.00–$30.00/mo depending on your chosen package. The main differences between packages are the number of people and devices covered. Family plans offer the most additional features, incorporating parental controls and online gaming safety into the regular offerings.

Features	Individual	Couple	Family
Price	$9.00/mo (billed annually)	$17.00/mo (billed annually)	$25.00/mo (billed annually)
Number of people covered	1 adult	2 adults	5 adults, unlimited children
Financial account monitoring
Credit score	Yes — Equifax, Experian, TransUnion	Yes — Equifax, Experian, TransUnion	Yes — Equifax, Experian, TransUnion
Credit score update frequency	Monthly	Monthly	Monthly
Credit report	Yes — Equifax, Experian, TransUnion	Yes — Equifax, Experian, TransUnion	Yes — Equifax, Experian, TransUnion
Credit report update frequency	Annually	Annually	Annually
Credit lock	Yes — Experian	Yes — Experian	Yes — Experian
Credit analysis
Credit building
Extras	Antivirus, password manager, ID theft protection, up to $1 million identity theft insurance, data removal, ad blocker, basic VPN, and more	Antivirus, password manager, ID theft protection, up to $2 million identity theft insurance, data removal, ad blocker, basic VPN, and more	Antivirus, password manager, ID theft protection, up to $5 million identity theft insurance, data removal, ad blocker, basic VPN, parental controls, Safe Gaming, AI spam call protection, and more
Learn more	View plan	View plan	View plan

Aura’s prices are on par with those of competitors who offer similar features and extras like antivirus and a VPN. While free services like Credit Karma provide monitoring without a monthly fee, paid services like Aura have perks such as identity theft insurance and fraud remediation assistance. If you’ve ever replaced a lost or stolen wallet, you know how frustrating and expensive of a process it is.

As we noted, Aura plans don’t differ too much outside of the number of people and devices covered. The price increases are mostly to cover additional people in the household. People with children can get the Family plan to protect them from child ID theft, online cyberbullying in games, and regulate device use with the included parental controls. Aura’s Family plan offers coverage for an unlimited number of children, which isn’t always the case with competitors.

Big families may want to consider Aura’s Family plan for their security needs. For anyone else, the Individual or Couple plans will give you all you need.

Aura features

Aura gives access to credit monitoring from the three major reporting bureaus, which isn’t a feature you find everywhere, especially with free credit monitoring. Here’s a list of the rest of the key features with more details below:

• Credit monitoring
• Credit reports and scores
• Credit analysis
• Credit builder
• Money management
• Bonus features

Credit monitoring

Aura’s credit monitoring feature is front and center. When we log into our portal, we’re greeted with our score in the main dashboard. We were also able to jump into the credit section and get valuable insights into our credit score. Aura reports using the VantageScore 3.0 model. 

For how much Aura costs annually, a good-to-have would be FICO monitoring. Unfortunately, most credit monitoring services don't monitor FICO, which is actually the scoring model most lenders use. However, you can also sign up for free tools like Experian and myFICO to get insights into your FICO score.

Credit reports and scores

Aura let us know the last time our Equifax credit was checked. Our Equifax score was available to us immediately, but Aura doesn't show credit scores from Experian or TransUnion unless you request it. This means that although Aura reports changes to Experian and TransUnion reports, it doesn't provide the individual scores from those two bureaus by default.

However, Aura does include the option to request our credit reports from all three major reporting bureaus, and once we signed the authorization, the scores populated in less than a minute. 

Credit analysis

Aura offers insights into what may be affecting your credit score. It detected that we don’t have a mortgage and suggested that lack of real estate payments could be lowering our credit score. We didn’t even know that was a thing, so having it appear in our credit analysis was interesting.

Credit builder

Unfortunately, Aura doesn’t have any credit building tools. Competitors like Credit Karma may offer you loans, credit cards, and credit building accounts to help raise your score. Aura didn’t give us that option.

Money management tools

After you connect your bank and other financial accounts, Aura lays out your incoming and outgoing funds. While there weren’t any hard and fast money management tools, we did have the option to set several types of alerts. This will help us monitor our money as well as catch any potential theft.

Bonus features

If you sign up only for credit monitoring services through Aura, you’ll also receive data broker removal, antivirus protection, identity theft protection services, and the option to add call protection for an additional fee. Plus, Aura offers continuous dark web and data breach monitoring to safeguard your credit and identity.

Is Aura safe to use?

We’re not in love with the amount of data that Aura collects or how it shares it for different purposes. Obviously, Aura needs a lot of personally identifiable information (PII) for credit monitoring and data removal, which is fine. What we aren’t as comfortable with is how Aura will sometimes share that data, per its privacy policy, with partners and affiliates. Aura shares your data with Plaid, for example, if you opt to connect your financial accounts.

In addition, Aura didn’t automatically turn on two-factor authentication. It is available, but you have to navigate through menus to find it. To turn on 2FA with your Aura account, do the following:

1. Log in to your Aura account.
2. Click the gear in the upper right corner of your dashboard.
3. Click Account details.
4. Enable two-factor authentication.

Aura customer support

Support type	Aura customer support
Email or live chat	Yes: contact support@aura.com or live chat on the site
Phone	Yes: call (833) 552-2123
Online guides or forums	Yes: Aura Help Center

Aura reached out to us within a few hours of signing up for the service. The representative asked why we joined the service and what our goals were. We also tried out Aura’s online chatbot on the website, which gave us the information we needed quickly.

Overall, Aura’s support was good. We want to mention that other team members have tested Aura's services and had difficulty dealing with support. It seems your success with Aura’s support team is directly related to how common your issue is, and if Aura has the resources to help you.

Top alternatives

If Aura doesn’t offer the features you’re looking for, don’t despair. We’ve tested Aura, LifeLock, and Omniwatch to give you pros, cons, and our experience so you can make the best choice for yourself and your family.

See how top competitors compare to Aura.

FAQs

Bottom line: Is Aura credit monitoring good?

Yes, from our experience, Aura credit monitoring is a good service.

We liked the dashboard's clear view of our data removal, credit score, and transaction history. We were also pleased with the ease of use, although we felt Aura’s user interface was a bit dated. As far as the service itself, however, we had no issues using Aura’s credit monitoring.

Security software is subjective, so if Aura doesn’t meet your expectations, try out some of the other best credit monitoring services available. Whether you want a paid service with identity theft protection or a free service to help build your credit, there’s likely one out there which will fit your needs.