Yelp Reviews Scraper

Extract public Yelp review data for one or many business pages. The actor collects clean review text, ratings, business context, photos, videos, reaction counts, reviewer metadata, owner replies, review URLs, and collection diagnostics for monitoring and analysis.

Who is it for?

• Reputation-management agencies tracking review changes for client portfolios.
• Local chains monitoring customer feedback across branches.
• Market researchers comparing public sentiment across competitors.
• Data teams enriching dashboards, alerts, BI reports, and AI review-analysis workflows.

What can Yelp Reviews Scraper do?

• Scrape public reviews from Yelp business URLs, aliases, or dedicated business IDs.
• Limit the number of reviews per business to control cost and runtime.
• Sort reviews by newest, relevance, highest rating, or lowest rating.
• Filter by selected star ratings, language, or review search text.
• Export attached review photos and videos, legacy feedback counts, current Yelp reactions, and visit tags.
• Attach business rating, review count, primary photo, and rating/language distributions to every review.
• Preserve partial output when one business fails in a multi-business run.
• Keep reviewer profile URLs redacted and extended reviewer profile metrics disabled by default.

Ready-to-run examples

Open these published examples from the Actor's Examples tab:

• Monitor the newest Yelp reviews for a business
• Find 1-star and 2-star Yelp reviews for a business
• Collect 5-star Yelp reviews for customer research
• Search Yelp reviews for service feedback
• Export English-language Yelp reviews to CSV or JSON
• Compare Yelp reviews across two businesses
• Build a Yelp reviews dataset for AI or RAG

Input example

{
  "startUrls": [
    { "url": "https://www.yelp.com/biz/gary-danko-san-francisco" },
    { "url": "bottega-louie-los-angeles" }
  ],
  "maxReviewsPerBusiness": 10,
  "sort": "DATE_DESC",
  "ratings": ["5", "4"],
  "language": "en",
  "reviewSearch": "service",
  "redactReviewerProfileUrls": true,
  "includeReviewerDetails": false
}

Input settings

Field	Type	Description
startUrls	array	Yelp business URLs or Yelp aliases. Bare aliases are not treated as opaque IDs.
businessUrls	array	Additional Yelp business URLs or aliases.
businessIds	array	Optional dedicated field for opaque Yelp business IDs.
changedSince	string	Experimental ISO date/time cutoff applied when Yelp provides a parseable UTC timestamp.
maxReviewsPerBusiness	integer	Maximum unique reviews to save for each business.
sort	string	DATE_DESC, RELEVANCE_DESC, RATING_DESC, or RATING_ASC.
ratings	array	Optional list of star ratings to include, such as ["5", "4"].
language	string	Optional language code such as en. Leave blank for Yelp default behavior.
reviewSearch	string	Optional keyword or phrase to search inside reviews.
redactReviewerProfileUrls	boolean	Omit direct reviewer profile URLs by default for privacy-conscious exports.
includeReviewerDetails	boolean	Include public reviewer review/friend/photo counts, Elite year, and profile photo. Disabled by default.

Output example

{
  "reviewId": "7byQK-mVsJdfCCb4MhzHYQ",
  "reviewPosition": 1,
  "reviewUrl": "https://www.yelp.com/biz/gary-danko-san-francisco?hrid=7byQK-mVsJdfCCb4MhzHYQ",
  "businessId": "WavvLdfdP6g8aZTtbBQHTw",
  "businessAlias": "gary-danko-san-francisco",
  "businessName": "Gary Danko",
  "businessUrl": "https://www.yelp.com/biz/gary-danko-san-francisco",
  "businessRating": 4.5,
  "businessReviewCount": 6133,
  "rating": 4,
  "text": "I've been to Gary Danko a few times over the years, and it continues to be one of San Francisco's classic fine dining restaurants.",
  "language": "en",
  "createdAt": "2026-07-31T05:31:29Z",
  "createdAtLocal": "2026-07-30T22:31:29-07:00",
  "reviewerName": "Johnny Z.",
  "reviewerProfileUrl": null,
  "reviewerReviewCount": null,
  "photos": [
    {
      "id": "KK2AtWft-qNmtAqAFZjgug",
      "url": "https://s3-media0.fl.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/KK2AtWft-qNmtAqAFZjgug/348s.jpg",
      "caption": null
    }
  ],
  "videos": [],
  "mediaCount": 10,
  "feedback": { "useful": 0, "funny": 0, "cool": 0 },
  "contentReactions": { "helpful": 0, "thanks": 0, "loveThis": 0, "ohNo": 0 },
  "ownerReply": null,
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.yelp.com/biz/gary-danko-san-francisco",
  "collectedAt": "2026-07-31T00:00:00.000Z"
}

This example is shortened for readability. Reviewer enrichment fields remain null unless includeReviewerDetails is enabled.

Output fields

Field group	Fields	Description
Review	reviewId, reviewPosition, reviewUrl, rating, text, language, createdAt, createdAtLocal	Stable review identity, clean text, rating, language, and UTC/local dates.
Business	businessId, businessAlias, businessName, businessUrl, businessRating, businessReviewCount, businessPrimaryPhotoUrl	Business identity and aggregate context attached to each review.
Business distributions	businessReviewCountsByRating, businessReviewCountsByLanguage	Rating and language totals supplied by Yelp.
Reviewer	reviewerId, reviewerName, reviewerLocation, reviewerProfileUrl	Public reviewer identity fields; profile URLs are redacted by default.
Optional reviewer enrichment	reviewerReviewCount, reviewerFriendCount, reviewerPhotoCount, reviewerEliteYear, reviewerProfilePhotoUrl	Public profile metrics returned only when includeReviewerDetails is enabled.
Owner reply	ownerReplyText, ownerReplyCreatedAt, ownerReply	Backward-compatible reply fields plus structured reply ID, author, role, and image.
Media	photos, videos, mediaCount	Attached review photos/videos with public URLs, captions, thumbnails, and counts.
Engagement	feedback, contentReactions, reactions	Useful/funny/cool and Helpful/Thanks/Love this/Oh no counts.
Visit metadata	checkInCount, isFirstReviewer, isReviewOfTheDay, hasPaidThroughYelp, hasPurchasedDeal, hasPlacedReservation, reservationProvider, previousReviewCount, experienceDate	Public context Yelp associates with the review or visit.
Provenance	sourceUrl, collectedAt	Input/resolved business URL and collection timestamp.

Pricing

This actor uses pay-per-event pricing. See the live Pricing tab for the current rates.

• Start: a small one-time fee is charged when a run starts.
• Review saved: charged for each Yelp review item successfully saved to the dataset.

You can keep runs inexpensive by using a low maxReviewsPerBusiness, limiting the number of businesses per run, and applying rating or keyword filters only when they are needed.

Common workflows

Monitor newest reviews for one business

{
  "startUrls": [{ "url": "https://www.yelp.com/biz/gary-danko-san-francisco" }],
  "maxReviewsPerBusiness": 20,
  "sort": "DATE_DESC",
  "redactReviewerProfileUrls": true
}

Find low-rating feedback for a portfolio

{
  "startUrls": [
    { "url": "gary-danko-san-francisco" },
    { "url": "bottega-louie-los-angeles" }
  ],
  "maxReviewsPerBusiness": 50,
  "sort": "DATE_DESC",
  "ratings": ["1", "2"],
  "redactReviewerProfileUrls": true
}

Search reviews for a service topic

{
  "startUrls": [{ "url": "https://www.yelp.com/biz/gary-danko-san-francisco" }],
  "maxReviewsPerBusiness": 25,
  "reviewSearch": "service",
  "language": "en"
}

API usage

Node.js

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
const run = await client.actor('fetch_cat/yelp-reviews-scraper').call({
  startUrls: [{ url: 'https://www.yelp.com/biz/gary-danko-san-francisco' }],
  maxReviewsPerBusiness: 10,
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient
import os

client = ApifyClient(os.environ['APIFY_TOKEN'])
run = client.actor('fetch_cat/yelp-reviews-scraper').call(run_input={
    'startUrls': [{'url': 'https://www.yelp.com/biz/gary-danko-san-francisco'}],
    'maxReviewsPerBusiness': 10,
})
items = client.dataset(run['defaultDatasetId']).list_items().items
print(items)

cURL

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/fetch_cat~yelp-reviews-scraper/runs?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"startUrls":[{"url":"https://www.yelp.com/biz/gary-danko-san-francisco"}],"maxReviewsPerBusiness":10}'

MCP and AI agent usage

Use the Apify MCP server with this actor to let AI agents request fresh Yelp review data:

https://mcp.apify.com?tools=fetch_cat/yelp-reviews-scraper

Add the Apify MCP server to Claude Desktop or Claude Code with a command such as:

$claude mcp add apify https://mcp.apify.com?tools=fetch_cat/yelp-reviews-scraper

MCP JSON configuration example:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify": {
      "url": "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=fetch_cat/yelp-reviews-scraper"
    }
  }
}

Example prompt ideas showing MCP usage:

• "Use Yelp Reviews Scraper to collect the newest 20 Yelp reviews for this business and summarize common complaints."
• "Run the actor for these Yelp business URLs and compare the latest low-star reviews across locations."
• "Export review text and ratings from Yelp Reviews Scraper for sentiment analysis."

Limits and troubleshooting

• Yelp may show fewer reviews than requested for businesses with limited public review history or tight filters.
• Some old review dates are only available as Yelp-displayed local date text.
• Extended reviewer profile metrics are disabled by default. Enable them only when your use case and retention policy require that personal data.
• Multi-business runs continue after a failed business and save failure details to key-value records.
• For large portfolios, run smaller batches on a schedule to simplify monitoring and retries.
• If a run returns no items, test one known public business URL with a low review limit first.

FAQ

Can I scrape multiple Yelp businesses in one run?

Yes. Add multiple business URLs or aliases to startUrls. The actor keeps each output item tied to its source business.

Can I collect only one-star reviews?

Yes. Set ratings to ["1"] and choose the sort order that fits your workflow.

Does the actor return owner replies?

Yes, public owner reply text and reply timestamps are returned when Yelp provides them.

Can I use the output in dashboards or alerts?

Yes. Export the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel, or consume it through the Apify API.

Does the actor include private Yelp data?

No. It extracts publicly available review data from business pages.

Related actors

• Google Maps Reviews Scraper
• Google Reviews Scraper
• Tripadvisor Reviews Scraper
• Trustpilot Reviews Scraper
• Facebook Reviews Scraper

Support

If a run fails or the output looks wrong, open an issue on the Actor page. Include the Apify run ID or run URL, input JSON, expected output, actual output, and one reproducible public Yelp business URL.