Does Opening a Lot of Credit Cards Hurt My Credit Score

Below is a chart from the FICO website showing what determines your credit score:

FICO^® Scores are calculated from a lot of different credit data in your credit report. This data can be grouped into five categories as outlined below. The percentages in the chart reflect how important each of the categories is in determining your FICO^® score.

These percentages are based on the importance of the five categories for the general population. For particular groups - for example, people who have not been using credit long - the importance of these categories may be somewhat different.

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The more accounts you have the more accounts will be in good standing in terms of payment and amounts owed so this directly affects for the good 65% of your score.

It is true that opening new cards will also directly affect 10% of your score - the part the depends on new credit. But, new cards are only considered new for 6 months. So even on this portion of the score there is only a detrimental effect for 6 months at most, so unless you are planning on leasing a car or buying a house WITHIN the next 6 months there is nothing to worry about.