How to Ask Your Credit Card to Increase Your Credit Limit

The first credit card I ever got was an AT&T Universal Card because someone had a table outside Doherty Hall at Carnegie Mellon University, my alma mater. I may have gotten a t-shirt out of it too.

The biggest appeal of the card? How I could get one as a freshman with no income (the guy told me to put my tuition for a salary… I’m pretty sure that wasn’t legit).

Fast forward a million years and I no longer have that card (it no longer exists, but for a while, you could still see an application page for it and its fantastic offer of 35 cents per minute domestic calls!) and instead use a series of three cards depending on the situation. All told, our total “credit limit” across every card (several of which are in the desk drawer) is over a hundred thousand dollars.

How did we get that much credit? Simple. We just asked for more.

And kept asking. And asking.

You can get more credit too, all you have to do is ask!

Why would you do this? It can improve your credit score. Credit utilization is a major factor in your credit score and credit utilization is a simple math calculation – total credit used divided by total credit available. When you increase your credit limit, you are increasing your total credit… thus lowering utilization.

There are three ways you can get your credit card to increase your credit limit:

• Wait – As you demonstrate that you can use and pay off credit, card issuers will increase it automatically. But you’re not the type to wait around for things to happen, so let’s talk about the other two.
• Ask via telephone – Call the customer service number on the back and navigate your way to a human being. Then ask about the process for increasing your credit limit without a credit inquiry. This is always an option but I’ve never actually done this myself because you can also…
• Ask online – Almost every credit card issuer has a way to request a credit line increase online. Customer service representatives in a call center cost money, computers do not. This is the way I’ve always done it and this is what I recommend. You can get a credit line increase faster than you can reach a human being on the telephone.

When doing this online, and on the phone but it’s less obvious, you want to get the increase without a credit report request. When it doubt, especially on the phone, ask if the increase request will require a credit review. If it does, don’t submit the request. If you don’t know, don’t submit the request. Better safe than sorry.

We include screenshots for Citi, CapitalOne, and American Express below but each issuer follows the same basic flow. Find your credit management area of the account and look for Request Credit Limit Increase. On the request page, confirm that the issuer will not initiate an inquiry with your credit bureau or request your credit report.

This is very important.

You should look for language like “instant approval” or “automatic” – which means a computer will have made the decision based the numbers they have in front of them. If it requires a manual review or a credit check, stop. That hard inquiry will more than negate the positive effects of an increase.

If in doubt, don’t make the request.

🔃 UPDATED: Updated January 2024 with new screenshots and process flows for requesting a credit limit increase from Chase. For some time, perhaps just because of the pandemic, Chase required you to call in to make an increase.

Citi

Log into your account and click on Services in the top menu and then click Credit Card Services.

On the next page, look in the left column titled Card Management and “Request a Credit Limit Increase” will be third from the bottom.

As you can see, it says “We will not obtain a credit bureau report to evaluate your request, and you will receive a decision instantly. All fields required.”

For Citi, you don’t even need to enter in the amount you want. Just enter your annual income, your housing payment, confirm, and boom!

It took 10 seconds and my credit limit went from $39,000 to $46,000 with no credit pull. A 17.90% increase in the limit of my card with no risk involved.

I could ask for more but it would require a credit review, which includes a credit report hard inquiry, which would decrease my score.

I don’t need the credit limit for the limit (and at $46,000 of limit, I never come close to hitting this among all my cards let alone a single one!), so I stop.

With Citi, you must wait at least six months between each request. Since this last request was made on January 17th, 2023, I have to wait until July 16th to ask again. Fortunately, Citi will tell you this!

Capital One

Log into your account and select your card, then find the Gear Icon and “I Want To…” menu item:

In the next menu, look in the lower left for Offers and Upgrades group, you’ll see Request Credit Line Increase – click that. This is the form that will pop up:

In May 2021, I had a limit of $11,000 with this card but I hadn’t been using it. I requested a $2,000 increase and claimed I’d use it for $4,000 in spending. Sometimes the approval is instant, sometimes it needs a review.

In my case, I saw the needs to be reviewed (I will check my credit report to see what kind of inquiry popped up and update this post):

In the past, if you were instantly approved, it would show this screen:

I submitted my information, confirmed on the subsequent page (not shown), and boom!

A $1,000 increase on a $10,000 credit limit, increasing my credit line by 10%.

If those were my only two credit cards, my total credit would’ve increased from $26,000 to $29,200. For thirty seconds of work, I’ve increased my total limits by $3200 (+12.3%).

In this most recent request, in May 2021, my request was declined because:

• Recent usage of this account for monthly spend has been too low
• Recent use of this account’s existing credit line has been too low

Both are fair reasons because I have not been using this card – smart! Make sure you use the card before requesting an increase because some issuers are using that in their determination.

I have yet to request an increase because this card isn’t in our regular rotation.

Chase

For years (perhaps because of the pandemic), Chase required you to call in to request an increase but now it appears they have reinstituted the online form!

To find the menu item, click onto the card you want to reveal the card details. Then look for the “More” menu item. Click it and look for Account Services, the Request credit limit increase item is located there.

From there, you are asked to pick which card you want to increase:

Pick one and you’ll be asked to update your Total gross annual income and your Monthly mortgage/rent. Once you enter that, you’ll be asked to confirm your entries. Once you click submit, you’ll see a “we’re working on it” type of screen.

Then, you’ll either be offered an increase, declined, or what I saw:

American Express

I was unable to find the link to the credit limit increase form through their new menu navigation but on this FAQ page for how do I request a credit limit increase, they link to this form. The FAQ page appears to be for the UK but when I’m logged into my account, it shows the proper page for the US.

You’re asked for total annual income and assets (optional) and then they ask you to connect your bank or upload your three most recent bank statements to confirm your income.

We didn’t go through this but I suspect the answer is rendered on the next page (or after a brief human review).

Rejections & Further Review

Sometimes your request will not be automatically accepted, this will happen if you requested and were granted an increase recently. “Recently” could be as few as six months or as long as 18 months, it depends on the issuer’s practices.

In this case, Capital One will not increase an account that’s less than 3 months old or received a credit line increase or decrease in the last six months.

With the American Express walkthrough, I was actually given a “further review” notice. I requested a 10% increase to my credit limit and was given this message:

Your request for a line of credit increase has been submitted.
You will receive a written response within 7-10 days.

But there’s no cost, except your time, to asking and not getting the increase.

How often can I do this? It depends on the issuer but most will only approve increases every six months. They will also require you to have a card for more than a few months, sometimes as little as 60 days. They just granted you a line of credit based on your application, they want to see how you behave with it before making a decision on giving you more. Each issuer will answer this question in a FAQ on their site.

There are some folks who request an increase every 6 months like clockwork. I’m not nearly that diligent, I ask when I remember and that usually works out to be once a year for the cards we use regularly and never for the ones we don’t.

If you want to do this regularly, I recommend creating a calendar notification that reminds you every six months to request an increase.

Over time, your limit will creep up and then you too can live the American Dream of having way more credit than you need. (which could be important if we move towards a cashless society!)

What happens if they do make an inquiry? If it’s a hard inquiry, expect a single-digit fall in your credit score for about 12 months. It’s as if you just applied for a new credit card. Hard inquiries will cost you a few points but the impact subsides after a year. The higher your credit is now, the bigger the dip.

(and if you ever check your report and see suspicious inquiries, know that you can get hard inquiries removed for several reasons)

If you haven’t asked for an increase in the last six months, I urge you to try now and report back what you find!

Have you done this?

What’s your total credit limit and what’s your system?