Channel dependent credit accumulation for determining a mobile handover is provided herein. In some aspects, a characteristic(s) of a source channel(s) serving a mobile device and of one or more target channels can be evaluated. Magnitudes of the evaluated characteristics can be utilized to generate handover credits associated with the target channel(s) (e.g., based on some function of a difference in the magnitudes). If a concurrent number of credits associated with a target channel equals or rises above one or more threshold levels, a mobile device can initiate a handover. As described, disparity in source and target channel quality, signal strength, etc., can be determined to increase probability of a handover based on channel degradation over one or more time intervals.