Yelp Fusion API
Business search and discovery API providing access to Yelp's database of 8M+ local businesses including restaurants, hours, reviews, photos, and ratings.
Score Breakdown
⚙ Agent Friendliness
🔒 Security
HTTPS enforced; API key auth is simple but no scopes or granular permissions — treat as all-or-nothing access
⚡ Reliability
Best When
An agent needs to recommend or surface local restaurant and business information from a trusted, user-generated review database with minimal setup.
Avoid When
You need transactional capability (ordering, reservations), require more than 500 requests/day on the free tier, or need data freshness guarantees.
Use Cases
- • Recommending nearby restaurants or businesses based on location and category
- • Surfacing business details (hours, phone, address, rating) in a concierge agent
- • Fetching user reviews to inform dining decisions
- • Building local business search into travel or lifestyle apps
- • Filtering restaurants by cuisine, price range, open hours, or distance
Not For
- • Making reservations (use OpenTable API for that)
- • Real-time menu or pricing data
- • Delivery ordering (use DoorDash or Uber Direct for that)
- • Programmatic review submission
Interface
Authentication
Simple API key passed as Bearer token in Authorization header. Easy for agents — no token refresh needed.
Pricing
Free tier is generous for prototyping and low-volume agents. Paid tiers require business partnership negotiation — no self-serve upgrade path.
Agent Metadata
Known Gotchas
- ⚠ 500 requests/day free tier is easily exhausted in chatty agent loops — cache aggressively
- ⚠ Search results capped at 1000 total (offset + limit), pagination stops at 1000
- ⚠ No real-time data: business hours and info can lag actual business state
- ⚠ GraphQL endpoint has different rate limits than REST and is less documented
- ⚠ Display requirements: must show Yelp branding when displaying Yelp data per ToS
Alternatives
Full Evaluation Report
Detailed scoring breakdown, competitive positioning, security analysis, and improvement recommendations for Yelp Fusion API.
Scores are editorial opinions as of 2026-03-06.