I used to be big fans of Credit Karma and TrueBill but both have sold out to companies I really dislike (essentially the Intuit family of companies). I really dislike Intuit lobbying the US government to keep taxes complicated as well as their mediocre software.
I tried Monarch but it didn’t really help me at all; it felt very incomplete. As for credit monitoring I know just about every bank offers gimmicky services but I’d like to avoid those if possible (don’t even get me started on personal banking).
Instead of credit monitoring, freeze your credit. It’s free to thaw it whenever you want. And you can look at a lot of details on the websites of the credit agencies including score. TransUnion offers the least before asking you to pay.
And many banks and credit card companies offer the same service for free.
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AFAIK freezing your credit doesn’t stop it from building up.
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Freeze it, it’ll still build but keep anyone from using it. And then when you want to use it you thaw it for however long and it’ll freeze right after.