The One Lender With a Published Number
Sunlight Financial, one of the larger national solar lenders, sets 650 FICO as its minimum for a standard loan and reserves its best annual percentage rate tiers for borrowers above 700. That figure comes directly from Sunlight’s own loan-requirements page, not a third-party estimate, which makes it the one concrete, sourced data point in this entire comparison, and the same figure already cited on VA Horizon’s own qualified-appointment checklist.
No other national lender in this comparison publishes a comparable floor, which is exactly what makes Sunlight’s disclosed 650-to-700 band the one reference point available rather than one entry in a fuller table.
Why GoodLeap and Mosaic Do Not Give You a Comparable Number
GoodLeap and Mosaic, two of the other largest national solar lenders, do not publish a specific FICO minimum on their own sites. EnergySage’s own solar-loans guide, one of the most detailed third-party financing resources available to homeowners, confirms the same pattern: it discusses secured-versus-unsecured structure and general creditworthiness qualitatively, without a lender-by-lender score table for Mosaic, GoodLeap, Sunlight, or anyone else.
That is not a gap in the research behind this guide. It reflects how most solar lenders actually operate: unlike a mortgage lender publishing conforming-loan minimums, a solar lender typically weighs the full underwriting file, income, debt-to-income ratio, and credit history together, rather than committing to one public cutoff score a competitor could undercut.
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Book a Solar CallThe Folklore-Number Problem Reps Should Watch For
Because most lenders keep their actual threshold private, a “670 FICO” or “700 FICO” number a rep hears secondhand in the field is frequently relayed folklore, an old promotion, a dealer’s rounded-up guess, or a different lender’s figure misattributed to whichever partner is top of mind. Sunlight’s 650-and-700 figures are the exception specifically because they are published, not because every lender operates the same way.
Repeating an unverified number to a homeowner sets an expectation nobody at the actual lender agreed to, and it is the kind of small inaccuracy that erodes trust fast once underwriting comes back different from what a rep promised.
What to Do Before Setting Credit Expectations
Verify current qualification directly with each financing partner before quoting a number to a homeowner, since published minimums can shift with a lender’s own promotions or state-level programs. Treat Sunlight’s disclosed 650-minimum, 700-for-best-rate structure as the one concrete anchor available, not a universal rule that applies to every other lender in the market.
For a homeowner whose credit looks marginal, the honest answer is that approval depends on the specific lender’s full underwriting file, not a single published cutoff score, since Sunlight’s disclosed 650 minimum is the only concrete figure in this comparison and GoodLeap’s and Mosaic’s own qualification criteria remain undisclosed, which is a more useful thing to say than guessing at a specific cutoff number for a partner that has never published one.
What this means for you
- Sunlight Financial is the one national solar lender that publishes its own credit threshold: 650 FICO minimum, best rates above 700.
- GoodLeap and Mosaic do not publish a comparable number, and EnergySage’s own guide treats solar-loan creditworthiness qualitatively, not with a lender-by-lender table.
- Verify current qualification directly with each financing partner before quoting a specific FICO number to a homeowner.
Sources
The external data in this guide draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.