Yelp Places(Fusion) API

The Yelp Places (Fusion) API gives programmatic access to Yelp's business directory, letting you search local businesses by term and location, retrieve detailed business profiles, and pull customer reviews. It also exposes Yelp's category taxonomy and an AI Chat endpoint that returns natural-language business insights generated from Yelp's data. The API is REST-based and returns JSON responses for every endpoint.

Power end-to-end data operations for your Yelp Places(Fusion) API API with Nexla. Our bi-directional Yelp Places(Fusion) API connector is purpose-built for Yelp Places(Fusion) API, making it simple to ingest data, sync it across systems, and deliver it anywhere — all with no coding required. Nexla turns API-sourced data into ready-to-use, reusable data products and makes it easy to send data to Yelp Places(Fusion) API or any other destination. With comprehensive monitoring, lineage tracking, and access controls, Nexla keeps your Yelp Places(Fusion) API workflows fast, secure, and fully governed.

Features

Type: API

SourceDestination

• Seamless API Integration: Connect to any endpoint as source or destination without coding, with automatic data product creation
• Visual Composition & Chaining: Build complex integrations using visual templates, chain API calls, and compose workflows with data validation and filtering
• API Proxy: Expose curated slices of your data securely with a secure and customizable API proxy that validates and transforms data on the fly
• Request optimization with intelligent batching, retry, and caching to minimize API calls and costs

Prerequisites

Before creating a Yelp Places (Fusion) API credential, you need a private API Key from the Yelp developer portal. Yelp uses API key authentication for all API requests, with the key sent as a Bearer token in the Authorization header.

To obtain your Yelp API Key, follow these steps:

1. Sign in to your Yelp account, or create one, at yelp.com.

2. Go to the Yelp Places API product page and select a plan. A free Starter plan is available for low-volume use; higher call volumes and premium endpoints (such as Business Reviews) require a paid Enhanced or Premium plan.

3. Complete the create-app form with your application name, industry, contact email, and a short description, then accept the Yelp API Terms of Use and Display Requirements.

4. Submit the form. Yelp automatically generates a private API Key for your app and displays it on the confirmation page.

5. Copy and store the API Key securely, as you will need it to configure your Nexla credential.

The API Key is sent as a Bearer token in the Authorization header (Authorization: Bearer API_KEY) for every request to the Yelp API. If your API Key is ever compromised, you can generate a new one from the Manage App page at yelp.com/developers/v3/manage_app by clicking Refresh My API Key. For detailed information about authentication, rate limits, and available endpoints, refer to the Yelp Fusion API documentation.

Authenticate

Credentials required

Authenticate using Yelp Fusion API Key

Field	Required	Secret	Description
API Key	Yes	Yes	API key from Yelp Developer Console (Required)
API Version	Yes	No	The version of the API (Default: v3)
Yelp API Base URL	Yes	No	Base URL for Yelp API (Default: https://api.yelp.com)

Create a credential in Nexla

1. After selecting the data source/destination type, click the Add Credential tile to open the Add New Credential overlay.

2. Enter a name for the credential in the Credential Name field and a short, meaningful description in the Credential Description field.

3. Enter your Yelp API Key in the API Key field. This is the private API Key generated for your app in the Yelp developer portal, obtained in Prerequisites. The API Key is sent as a Bearer token in the Authorization header for every request to the Yelp API and must be kept confidential.

4. Enter the API version in the API Version field. This defaults to v3, the current stable version of the Yelp Fusion API, and should only be changed if you are targeting a different API version.

5. Enter the base URL in the Yelp API Base URL field. This defaults to https://api.yelp.com and should only be changed if Yelp instructs you to use an alternate endpoint.

   If your Yelp API Key is compromised, generate a new one from the Manage App page at yelp.com/developers/v3/manage_app by clicking Refresh My API Key. Refreshing the key immediately invalidates the old one.

   For detailed information about authentication, rate limits, and available endpoints, see the Yelp Fusion API documentation.

6. Click the Save button at the bottom of the overlay. The newly added credential will now appear in a tile on the Authenticate screen during data source/destination creation.

Use as a data source

To create a new data flow, navigate to the Integrate section, and click the New Data Flow button. Select the Yelp Places(Fusion) API connector tile, then select the credential that will be used to connect to Yelp, and click Next; or, create a new Yelp Places(Fusion) API credential for use in this flow.

Endpoint templates

Nexla provides pre-built templates that can be used to rapidly configure data sources to ingest data from common Yelp Fusion API endpoints. Select the endpoint from which this source will fetch data from the Endpoint pulldown menu. Available endpoint templates are listed in the expandable boxes below.

Places Search

This endpoint template searches for businesses by term, location, or coordinates. Use this template when you need to build business discovery, local search, or lead-generation datasets from Yelp's business directory.

• Enter the search keyword in the Search Term field (required). For example, pizza or dentist.
• Enter the geographic area to search in the Location field (required). This can be a city, state, or address.
• Optionally, select a value in the Sort By field to control result ordering. Available options are Best Match (Recommended) (default), Rating (Highest First), Review Count (Most First), and Distance (Nearest First).
• Optionally, enter one or more category aliases in the Categories field to filter results by business category.

This endpoint returns up to 240 matching businesses, with basic details such as name, category, rating, review count, and location for each result. Results are paginated automatically by Nexla.

For detailed information about search parameters, sorting behavior, and available premium filters, see the Yelp Business Search reference.

Business Details

This endpoint template retrieves detailed information about a specific business. Use this template when you already have a Yelp business ID and need its full profile, such as hours, photos, and contact information.

• Enter the Yelp business ID to retrieve in the Business ID field (required). Business IDs can be obtained from the results of the Places Search endpoint.

This endpoint returns the full business record for a single business, including name, categories, rating, price level, hours, photos, and location details.

For detailed information about the response fields, see the Yelp Business Details reference.

Business Reviews

This endpoint template retrieves reviews for a specific business. Use this template when you need customer review text, ratings, and reviewer details for a business you have already identified.

• Enter the Yelp business ID to retrieve reviews for in the Business ID field (required). Business IDs can be obtained from the results of the Places Search endpoint.

This endpoint requires a Yelp Premium or Enhanced plan. Requests made with a Starter plan API Key will be rejected. See Prerequisites for information about Yelp plan tiers.

For detailed information about the response fields, see the Yelp Business Reviews reference.

Categories

This endpoint template retrieves all business categories supported by Yelp. Use this template when you need the full category taxonomy to validate, map, or filter category values elsewhere in your flow.

• This endpoint takes no parameters. Select Categories from the Endpoint pulldown menu to retrieve the complete category list.

For detailed information about the category taxonomy and response fields, see the Yelp Categories reference.

AI Chat

This endpoint template generates AI-powered business insights using the Yelp AI API. Use this template when you need natural-language answers about businesses, such as summarized recommendations, generated from a free-form prompt.

• Enter the prompt to send to Yelp's AI chat in the Message field (required).

This endpoint sends the message as JSON in a POST request body and returns a natural-language response generated from Yelp's business data.

For detailed information about this endpoint, see the Yelp AI Chat reference.

Once the selected endpoint template has been configured, click the Test button to the right of the endpoint selection menu to retrieve a sample of the data that will be fetched. Sample data will be displayed in the Endpoint Test Result panel on the right, allowing you to verify that the source is configured correctly before saving.

Manual configuration

Yelp Places(Fusion) API data sources can also be manually configured to ingest data from any valid Yelp Fusion API endpoint, including endpoints not covered by the pre-built templates or custom request parameters. Select the Advanced tab at the top of the configuration screen, and follow the instructions in Connect to Any API to configure the API method, endpoint URL, date/time and lookup macros, path to data, metadata, and request headers.

Once all of the relevant settings have been configured, click the Create button in the upper right corner of the screen to save and create the new Yelp Places(Fusion) API data source. Nexla will now begin ingesting data from the configured endpoint and will organize any data that it finds into one or more Nexsets.