RUST,
Paying for your score through any agency will get you your “consumer” score. It is NOT necessarily the same score that somebody in the mortgage business will get when running your score for a loan purpose.
It is also possible that a score run for the purposes of an auto loan can be different.

There is also a new scoring system that is being used that goes up to 900 or 1000 that nobody in the world cares about.
That’s what you may get if you pay.

The standard system used for mortgages has a high of 850, (which is nearly impossible to have)

No mortgage lender will use the score that you come up with, they will need to run their own. Scores can change at any time.

Paying for a consumer score will give you an idea of where you stand, but that’s it. You really cannot accurately shop for a mortgage with a consumer score.

The advantage to running your own credit report is that it is considered a “soft” inquiry and shouldn’t affect your credit score.
Running a hard inquiry will be accurate, but could affect your score a few points, which should recover in a short period of time.

I can offer to run a tri-merge report (all 3 bureaus) with mortgage scores for you for $30 for a single or couple.

I think that you have my contact info if interested.