How to get and use Yelp API Key: Fusion API and Business API

What is Yelp API?

The Yelp Fusion API allows its users to get local content and user reviews from millions of businesses of hospitality and service industries across 32 countries. The Yelp content can be used for app and website developing purposes. 

How do I get the Yelp API Key?

Getting your Fusion API key is fast and easy. To do it, you have to follow these simple Yelp API guidelines.

• Step 1 – Create an account

  First you have log into the developers portal with your existing Yelp account or create a new one

  

  You can continue working with Yelp service through Facebook, Google, or Apple account. The other option is to sign up with your email address. In this case you’ll get a confirmation email – don’t forget to follow the link in it to verify your account.

  

You’re going to have to verify you’re not a robot by completing a reCaptcha.
• Step 2 – Get started with Fusion API

  Once you’ve logged into the Yelp developers service, scroll down to the bottom of the first page and press the Explore Yelp Fusion button.

  

  You will get to the Fusion API section of the portal. Press the Get Started button.

  

• Step 3 – Create an App

  Create your first Yelp App to receive your personal Fusion API key. Fill in the required fields in the form, agree to Yelp API Terms of Use and Display Requirements. Then prove you’re a human, and press Create New App.

  

  After that you’ll get your App ID and API Key. Save them to start working with your App.

  

How to use Yelp API?

There are several kinds of APIs, which basically can be divided into solutions for small businesses or enterprises and for middle or large business and potential Yelp partners. The first ones are included into the Yelp Fusion API and are available for everyone for free. The latter require a special access, that you have to apply for and wait for the company’s decision.

The Yelp Fusion API allows its users to get local content and user reviews from millions of businesses of hospitality and service industries across 32 countries.

The Yelp content can be used for app and website developing purposes to help your users find the best places and service providers in a certain locality, and compare them by the rating and customer reviews. The Yelp Fusion API uses private key authentication to authenticate all endpoints. 

Pricing and Limits

All the solutions are open and available for free for standard access. Though there are Yelp API limits for calls with additional rate limit volumes provided case-by-case. It means you have to apply for them describing your project in its full potential. After that you are going to wait for their decision.

Yelp API has several types of limits. The first one is QPS Rate Limiting which stands for Queries-Per-Second. If you make queries against the Yelp API too quickly, you may get HTTP 429 errors. If you see the error regularly, try to slow down the rate at which you make API calls.

In addition to QPS, there is also a limit to the number of API requests per day.

Yelp API examples

• Yelp Reviews API

  This kind of query is a Yelp Fusion API example that gives an opportunity to demonstrate up to three review excerpts for a business. There’s also a Private Yelp Review API solution that provides a means for approved Yelp partners to retrieve reviews that are publicly viewable on the platform.

  For exposing an unlimited number of your business reviews on your website, use Elfsight Yelp Reviews widget available for free!

• Yelp Business API

  The Fusion API provides a whole set of business endpoints that return detailed business content.

  These are the basic endpoints used:

  Name	Path	Description
  Business Search	/businesses/search	Search by keyword, category, location, price level, etc.
  Phone Search	/businesses/search/phone	Search by phone number.
  Transaction Search	/transactions/{transaction_type}/search	Search for services supporting food delivery transactions.
  Business Details	/businesses/{id}	Get full business data, such as name, address, phone number, photos, Yelp rating, price levels and hours of operation.
  Business Match	/businesses/matches	Find the Yelp business that matches an exact input location.

• Yelp Search API

  This endpoint returns up to 1000 businesses based on the provided search criteria. It has some basic information about the business.  Fusion Search API includes a wide variety of categories which include Arts, Beauty, Education Finances and many more. The full list of Yelp API categories can be found here. The API does not return businesses without any reviews.

Yelp API changes

The currently operating version of Yelp API is v3 that replaced Yelp API v2 in the 2018

The v2 version used OAuth 2.0 to authenticate requests to the API. In order to simplify this process , starting March 1, 2018 the API moved over to only API Keys and no longer uses OAuth 2.0 for the queries.

With OAuth 2.0 the authentication process was:

1. Get your Client ID from the Manage App.
2. Make a request to the token endpoint to get an access token.
3. Put the access token inside of the request header and start making requests against the API.

With just API Keys this process is:

1. Get your API Key at the Manage App page.
2. Put the API Key in the request header.

Now there’s no need to make a request to the endpoint to get an access token. Your API Key does not expire, so you mustn’t to worry about generating new ones.

Yelp Developer API Documentation

Yelp developers website contains all kinds of the Yelp API tutorials which explain its operating principles and practical usage. You can find it here. There you also can create your applications and work with the Fusion API and Yelp GraphQL – a query language for APIs. The comprehensive collection of developer documentation considering special partner API is featured on Yelp Developer Portal. The access to these Advertising APIs, Reservation APIs and others can be obtained only by making an application.

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