Yelp Fusion API: what it costs, and an alternative
The Yelp Fusion API dropped its free tier: plans now run $229 to $643 a month, and reviews arrive as short excerpts, not full text. Here is the math, and another way.
The current Yelp Fusion plans
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 how many depends on the plan: Base returns zero review excerpts and zero photos, Enhanced returns up to 3 excerpts and 3 photos, and Premium tops out at 7 excerpts and 12 photos per business. So the $229 plan gives you listings without 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 1-credit page, with a token for the next page. Measured on the July 27 pull below.
A year of review content, both ways
Priced on what each dollar returns in review text.
Local business data, metered per record
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, full address with coordinates, phone, website, rating, review count, opening hours, and price level when Google lists one, at 1 credit per business returned. The reviews endpoint returns pages of full review text with rating, date, reviewer profile, and photos at 1 credit per search, with a pagination token to keep going as deep as you want.
One request, real local data
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 | 26183 |
| Gino's East | Pizza restaurant | 162 E Superior St, Chicago, IL 60611 | (312) 266-33•• | 4.7 | 19863 |
| Lou Malnati's Pizzeria | Pizza restaurant | 439 N Wells St, Chicago, IL 60654 | (312) 828-98•• | 4.4 | 13261 |
| Pequod's Pizza | Pizza restaurant | 2207 N Clybourn Ave, Chicago, IL 60614 | (773) 327-15•• | 4.4 | 16588 |
| Pizzeria Portofino | Pizza restaurant | 317 N Clark St, Chicago, IL 60654 | (312) 900-90•• | 4.9 | 17961 |
| Zarella Pizzeria & Taverna | Pizza restaurant | 531 N Wells St, Chicago, IL 60654 | (312) 470-02•• | 4.9 | 2295 |
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. An 891-character review on the same pull came back whole too.
Fusion vs per-record local data
Two different sources with overlapping jobs. Here is how the terms differ.
| Yelp Fusion | CrustAPI | |
|---|---|---|
| Entry cost | $229 / month after the trial | $0, then $49 for 25,000 credits |
| Free tier | 30-day trial, 5,000 calls, once | 3,000 credits every month |
| 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 credits cover, at your pace |
| Unused volume | Monthly allotment | Credits 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.
Related: Restaurant API · Google Reviews API · POI API · Business leads API
Common questions
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.
Get 3,000 free credits