Young man with glasses looks at his laptop in a co-working space with people working at a desk in the background.

How Long Do Collections Stay on Your Credit Report?

7 min read

Last Updated: June 24, 2025

Table of contents

Key Takeaways

Collections stay on your credit report for up to seven years.
Collection accounts hurt your credit score and may deter lenders from offering you credit.
If you’re struggling to pay your credit card bills, contact your lender and request a new repayment plan.

Seeing an account in collections on your credit report can be scary. And you probably have lots of questions about it:

What does it mean for an account to be in collections? How does a collections account affect your credit? When will it be removed from your credit report? And will you still be able to get credit cards or a loan if you need one?

To understand the answers to these questions, it’s helpful to know how collections get on your credit report in the first place.

How collections get on your credit report

When you miss a payment on your credit card bill, a credit bureau will note it on your credit report. Late or missed payments may impact your credit score, so it’s best to avoid them. (You may incur fees or penalty interest rates for late payments, too.)

If you don’t make a payment for a long time, a credit card issuer may “charge off” your account. There’s no set period of time that a company will give you before they charge off your debt. 180 days is common, but it could happen faster.

What does it mean that your account has been charged off? It means the issuer considers your account a loss. You still owe the credit card issuer when your debt has been charged off, but it’s now reported to credit reporting agencies as “in collections.” The original account is now closed and will show as a closed account on your credit report. You can’t make any new purchases, and it doesn’t accrue more interest.

Once your account is closed, a new collections account will be added to your credit report. That new account is what damages your credit. The creditor will now start trying to get you to repay your debt.

You may get calls from the collections team at your credit card company. Or the company will sell your debt to a collections agency, and the agency (also known as a debt collector) will try to collect on your debt.

Collection agencies buy old debt from creditors, then try to collect that debt. A collection agency will try to contact you in person, over the phone, by mail, or by email. Once they’ve reached out to you, they’ll send you a validation notice and can report your debt to a credit bureau.

How long do collections stay on a credit report?

Late payments and accounts in collections remain on your credit report for as long as seven years.

For example, if you missed a payment on June 1, 2025, and don’t make any payments after that, your lender would likely charge it off by December 1, 2025. The charge-off and collection wouldn’t be removed from your credit report until December 1, 2032.

If you don’t pay the debt, any lender who accesses your credit report will be able to see that you have an unpaid or charged-off account. This may deter them from lending to you.

If you repay the debt after it’s sent to collections, the account status may show as paid, but the collection will remain on your credit report. Paying off debt in collections could help your credit score.

How to remove collections from your credit report

If you’ve had an account go to collections, there’s nothing you need to do to have it removed. After seven years, the major credit bureaus will remove it from your report.

It’s possible to ask your creditor to remove the collections account from your credit report sooner by writing a goodwill letter. This letter explains the reason for paying your debt late and asks the lender to remove the account from your credit report after you’ve repaid your debt. Creditors aren’t required to remove the account, but it might be worth a try if you’ve repaid your debt.

How accounts in collection affect your credit score

Collection accounts will likely have a negative impact on your credit score. Late payments and collections affect your payment history, which is a significant factor in calculating credit scores. You may see a drop in your credit score when your account is sent to collections.

While the collections account remains on your credit report for seven years, its impact on your credit score goes down over time. So, even if you’ve had an account go to collections, you may be able to rebuild your credit with a collections account still in your report.

Did you know?

If you’re struggling to pay your credit card bills or you have other types of high-interest debt, a balance transfer could help. By moving one or more high-interest debts onto a credit card, often with a low introductory interest rate, you can save on interest payments while you pay down your debt.

Learn More

What if the collection is in error?

If you believe the debt collection account on your credit report shouldn’t be there, you can file a dispute with a credit bureau or a debt collection agency.

(It’s a good idea to request a free credit report once a year to make sure there are no errors. If you find one, you can file a dispute with the major credit bureau that provided your report.)

If the debt collector made a mistake, the CFPB suggests sending them a written dispute within 30 days of your initial contact. A collector must stop collection activity if you raise a dispute, and they can only restart collection activity once they’ve responded to your dispute.

If a collections account is still on your credit report after seven years, you can file a dispute with the credit bureau that sent you the report. As long as the account is past the seven-year mark, the bureau should remove it.

The bottom line

Collections accounts stay on your credit report for seven years after your original debt is charged off and sent to collections. If you repay your debt after it goes to collections, the paid collection account will also stay on your report for seven years.

A collection account can have a significant negative effect on your credit history, and may make it more difficult to get a new credit account, like a credit card or personal loan, in the future.

It’s best to avoid having your debts go to collections in the first place. If you can’t make your minimum payments, get in touch with your credit card issuer or find a credit counselor. If you pay off your debt, you may be able to get in touch with your original creditor to explain why your payment was late and ask them to remove the collections from your credit report.

If a credit reporting agency put a collections account on your credit report in error, you can have it removed. Contact the reporting agency to file a dispute. If a collections account has been on your report for more than seven years, you can also file a dispute to have it removed.

Important Information >