The API Report CardAPI Index
Yelp for Business

Yelp for Business API

Local business platform · business.yelp.com

Yelp's developer platform spans five API families, led by the paid Fusion Places API at $229 to $643 per month. The Leads API is reserved for reseller partners with minimum spend. No API lets a business export its own reviews or messages; Yelp points SMBs to Zapier.

Last verified: August 2026Marketing & SalesMCP PARTIAL
API GRADE
C
VERIFIED AUG 2026

SCORECARD

ExistenceGOODA real developer platform with five API families: Places (Fusion), Advertising, Insights, Platform, and Reservations.
AccessMIXEDFusion runs $229 to $643 per month with an evaluation-only trial; the Leads API is reseller-partner-only with minimum spend.
CoverageMIXEDConsumer search data is reachable; a business cannot pull its own reviews, messages, or ad spend, and export is prohibited.
AuthMIXEDAPI keys for Fusion, OAuth plus webhooks for the partner-gated Leads API.
Docs & DXMIXEDdocs.developer.yelp.com covers the product families, but the documented path for non-partner SMBs is Zapier.
StabilityMIXEDDaily quota exhaustion returns 429 until midnight UTC; repeated overages risk suspension with a limited appeal path.
MCPPARTIALYelp's official MCP server exposes Fusion AI search and discovery over Yelp business data, but it does not cover business account features such as listing management, ads, or review responses. No dedicated server exists for the business owner platform. VERIFIED 2026-08
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Frequently asked questions

Yelp for Business scores C on Supergood's API Report Card. Yelp's developer platform spans five API families, led by the paid Fusion Places API at $229 to $643 per month. The Leads API is reserved for reseller partners with minimum spend. No API lets a business export its own reviews or messages; Yelp points SMBs to Zapier.

Tried to integrate with Yelp for Business?
SOURCES
Leads API is restricted to reseller partners with an undisclosed minimum spend; individual business owners cannot use it directly docs.developer.yelp.com
Yelp Business Owner accounts cannot sign up for the developer API on the same login, owners must log out and create a separate Yelp user account to access Fusion docs.developer.yelp.com
Fusion / Places API trial calls are 'STRICTLY FOR EVALUATION AND NOT FOR COMMERCIAL DEPLOYMENT,' forcing commercial users into $229–$643/mo subscriptions plus per-1k overage business.yelp.com
Yelp explicitly prohibits exporting reviews from the partner/business dashboard, pushing SMBs toward third-party scrapers like ExportComments exportcomments.com
Recommended non-partner workflow for getting leads out of Yelp is a Zapier integration, adding cost, latency, and a third party in the lead path docs.developer.yelp.com
Daily quota exhaustion returns HTTP 429 and resets at midnight UTC; repeated violations may result in access suspension with limited appeal path business.yelp.com
Ecosystem of unofficial scrapers (Apify renzomacar/yelp-business-detail, lead.gen.labs/business-leads-with-yelp, GitHub Yelp/yelp-fusion forks) exists specifically because there is no sanctioned owner-side API apify.com
'Message the business' eligibility and qualifying-business rules for the Leads API exclude many advertisers, with no published path to qualify docs.developer.yelp.com
FTC closed a multi-year investigation into Yelp's ad-sales practices in 2015 without action after 2,000+ small-business complaints alleging review manipulation tied to ad pitches pcworld.com
Levitt v. Yelp! (9th Cir. 2014), class-action extortion suit against Yelp dismissed; court held alleged review manipulation, even if true, was not legally extortion olshanlaw.com
Yelp paid $450,000 to settle FTC COPPA charges over collecting registration info from minors under 13 pcworld.com
Trustpilot rating for business.yelp.com sits in the 1-star range with thousands of reviews citing unauthorized charges, ads that auto-restart after cancellation, and unresponsive support trustpilot.com
BBB profile for Yelp Inc. lists a long pattern of complaints about advertising billing disputes, refund refusals, and removed reviews bbb.org
Documented owner complaint: cancelled ads in August 2025 but continued to be charged through May 2026 after Yelp restarted the campaign without consent trustpilot.com
'Yelp business advertising is a scam' threads and PissedConsumer collections detail credit-card capture for 'free promo' that converts into ongoing charges yelp.com
Long-standing perception that the recommendation/review-filter algorithm correlates with ad spend, even though Yelp denies it; the dispute has driven a decade of SMB backlash raymondfong.net
Yelp Consumer Alerts program publicly tags businesses for 'suspicious' review activity, owners report little recourse to remove badges once placed trust.yelp.com