Yelp Fusion API: what it costs, and an alternative
What Yelp Fusion costs in 2026, and a free alternative.
How much does Yelp Fusion cost?
Yelp moved Fusion to paid plans. Figures below are from Yelp's own product and pricing page, checked July 27, 2026.
| Plan | Monthly price | Overage per 1,000 calls |
|---|---|---|
| Trial | Free for 30 days, 5,000 calls | No overage; upgrade to continue |
| Base | $229 | $5.91 |
| Enhanced | $299 | $6.57 |
| Premium | $643 | $14.13 |
| 150,000+ calls / month | Enterprise, contact sales | Quoted |
Plans include 30,000 API calls a month by default with a daily cap of 5,000, and overage bills in 1,000-call increments. There is no permanent free tier: after the 30-day trial, keeping access means picking a paid plan.
Excerpts, not reviews
If review content is why you want the API, read the tier limits before you pay.
Fusion never returns full review text, only truncated excerpts, and the caps depend on plan. Base gets zero excerpts and zero photos, Enhanced up to 3 of each, Premium up to 7 excerpts and 12 photos per business.
So the $229 plan gives you listings with no review content at all, and even $643 caps you at 7 short excerpts.
Base 0, Enhanced 3, Premium 7. Excerpts, not the full text.
20 full reviews per successful request, with a token for the next page. Measured on the August 4 pull below.
A year of review content, both ways
Priced on what each dollar returns in review text.
A Yelp Fusion API alternative
The same local questions answered from the Google surface: listings priced per business, and reviews as full text.
CrustAPI's place search returns each business as a complete record: name, category, address with coordinates, phone, website, rating, review count, and hours. It bills the Maps rate per business returned.
The reviews endpoint returns pages of full review text with rating, date, and reviewer profile, at one charge per search. A pagination token keeps you going as deep as you want.
What data do you get?
The businesses as CSV first:
Sample rows as CSV, exactly as exported · phones unmasked in the API response
| name | category | address | phone | rating | reviews |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Giordano's | Pizza restaurant | 130 E Randolph St, Chicago, IL 60601 | (312) 616-12•• | 4.5 | 26254 |
| Gino's East | Pizza restaurant | 162 E Superior St, Chicago, IL 60611 | (312) 266-33•• | 4.7 | 19939 |
| Lou Malnati's Pizzeria | Pizza restaurant | 439 N Wells St, Chicago, IL 60654 | (312) 828-98•• | 4.4 | 13292 |
| Pequod's Pizza | Pizza restaurant | 2207 N Clybourn Ave, Chicago, IL 60614 | (773) 327-15•• | 4.4 | 16627 |
| Pizzeria Portofino | Pizza restaurant | 317 N Clark St, Chicago, IL 60654 | (312) 900-90•• | 4.9 | 18142 |
| George's Deep Dish LLC | Pizza restaurant | 6221 N Clark St, Chicago, IL 60660 | (773) 801-15•• | 4.7 | 379 |
And one complete review from the reviews endpoint, same key. The field is named snippet for serper-compatible JSON, but it carries the whole review:
That is the review's full text, start to finish. A 1,292-character review on the same pull came back whole too.
How do you get started?
No code needed. From zero to your first local data pull in about two minutes:
- 1
Create a free account. Try it free, no card needed.
- 2
Type a search in the playground. Something like pizza in Chicago. The businesses land in a table.
- 3
Export the CSV, or run the curl above. Same data, as a spreadsheet or JSON.
Yelp Fusion vs CrustAPI
Two different sources with overlapping jobs. Here is how the terms differ.
| Yelp Fusion | CrustAPI | |
|---|---|---|
| Entry cost | $229 / month after the trial | Deposits from $10; lower prices from $149 |
| Free tier | 30-day trial, 5,000 calls, once | Free tier |
| Review content | Excerpts only: 0 to 7 by plan | Full review text, paginated |
| Included volume | 30,000 calls / month, 5,000 / day cap | Whatever your funds cover, at your pace |
| Unused volume | Monthly allotment | Paid funds never expire |
| Data source | Yelp's own listings and ratings | The public Google listing layer |
When Fusion is the right buy: if your product must display Yelp-branded content, Yelp ratings, or Yelp's curated categories with permission, Fusion is the legitimate road and the only one. This alternative covers the local business data job, not the Yelp brand.
How much does CrustAPI cost?
Place searches bill the Maps rate per business returned. Review pulls bill the applicable price per successful search, and one search returns a page of 20 full reviews. Empty results cost nothing.
| Deposit | Google Search / 1,000 requests | Maps / 1,000 businesses | LinkedIn reads / 1,000 requests | People, Jobs, Refresh / 1,000 units |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $10+ | $1.00 | $1.96 | $6.00 | $1.96 |
| $149+ | $0.76 | $1.49 | $4.50 | $1.49 |
| $549+ | $0.56 | $1.10 | $3.30 | $1.10 |
| $1,999+ | $0.41 | $0.80 | $2.45 | $0.80 |
| $6,500+ | $0.33 | $0.65 | $1.95 | $0.65 |
| $27,500+ | $0.28 | $0.55 | $1.65 | $0.55 |
| $50,000+ | $0.26 | $0.50 | $1.50 | $0.50 |
| $100,000+ | $0.20 | $0.40 | $1.50 | $0.40 |
Every eligible account gets $6 of free usage monthly. Each deposit keeps its prices until spent; paid funds never expire. People and Jobs bill per successful search, Refresh per accessible profile. Full profiles in People use the read rate per full profile. See all billing details.
Larger deposits unlock lower endpoint prices. Each deposit keeps its prices until spent. See the full deposit table on the pricing page. Prices in USD, ex-tax.
Funds are prepaid and never expire. There is no monthly plan to keep alive.
Who uses this instead of Fusion?
- Review analysis teams. Full review text, page after page, for sentiment models that excerpts cannot feed.
- Lead gen and sales teams. Every business in a niche with phone and website, exported as CSV the same day.
- App builders. Per-record pricing that starts at $0 instead of a $229 a month floor before the first user.
- Market researchers. Ratings, review counts, and categories across whole cities, refreshed whenever they re-pull.
Related: Restaurant API · Google Reviews API · POI API · Business leads API
Common questions
Not anymore. There is a 30-day trial with 5,000 calls, and continued access requires a paid plan: Base $229, Enhanced $299, or Premium $643 a month. Checked on Yelp's pages, July 27, 2026.
Plans include 30,000 API calls a month with a daily cap of 5,000, and overage billed per 1,000 calls: $5.91 on Base, $6.57 on Enhanced, $14.13 on Premium. Above 150,000 calls a month is enterprise sales.
No. It returns truncated excerpts, capped by plan: zero on Base, up to 3 on Enhanced, up to 7 on Premium, with photo caps to match.
CrustAPI's reviews endpoint returns pages of full review text with rating, date, reviewer profile, and photos, one charge per search, with pagination to keep going.
The Maps rate per business returned, with name, category, address, coordinates, phone, website, rating, review count, and hours on every record, plus price level when Google lists one. Empty searches are free.
When your product must show Yelp-branded content with permission: Yelp ratings, Yelp categories, Yelp attribution. That content only legitimately comes from Yelp.
Clay
Price the data, not the logo
If the job is local business data with real review text, pull one city free and compare what comes back. No card.
Try for free