Is Yelp free for businesses? What Yelp ads and upgrades cost in 2026

What's free and what you pay for

Yelp says its minimum budgets are subject to change, so check the pricing page before you sign up. Customers can also request quotes through your free page.

How Yelp Ads are charged

Yelp Ads are cost per click. Yelp says the price per click depends on competition and relevance, and that you pay the least needed to win the click. It doesn't publish a typical cost per click.

• You set a monthly maximum. Daily spend can vary, but Yelp says you'll never pay more than that maximum.
• You're billed monthly, only for clicks you received.
• Self-serve advertisers have no term contract and can pause, edit or cancel at any time. Yelp says you can spend as little as about $5 a day on average.
• Bigger formats (Showcase, Spotlight and audience ads) are arranged through a Yelp expert and have no published prices.

What the Upgrade Package adds

The Upgrade Package is a fixed monthly fee, about $6 a day on average, billed on the 1st of each month, with a 14-day free trial (terms apply). Depending on your category it adds up to seven features:

• Business Highlights and a call-to-action button.
• Your logo and a photo slideshow at the top of your page.
• Yelp Connect posts, and a portfolio for eligible categories.
• Competitors' ads removed from your page. Without the package, other businesses' ads can appear there.

Yelp reviews: you can't ask for them

Yelp is stricter than Google. Its rules say businesses must not ask anyone for a review: not customers, not your mailing list, not friends or family, and not after a survey or contact form. Incentives of any kind are banned too.

Yelp's software tries to spot requested reviews and doesn't recommend them, and Yelp may put a consumer alert on pages where it finds incentivised reviews. What you can do:

• Put up Yelp's "Find us on Yelp" signs and stickers, and embed your Yelp reviews on your website.
• Reply to every review, good and bad, from your business account.
• Share recommended Yelp reviews you already have, crediting the reviewer.

For a steady flow of new reviews, ask customers for Google reviews instead: Google allows you to ask, as long as you don't offer incentives or only ask customers you expect to be happy. Our guide to removing Yelp reviews covers what to do about unfair ones.

Is paying for Yelp worth it?

It depends on whether your customers use Yelp, which varies a lot by city and type of business. Your own numbers are the best guide:

1. Claim the free page first and keep it complete and up to date.
2. Check your Yelp analytics for a few months: how many people view your page and call or ask for a quote without any ads.
3. If you try ads, set a monthly maximum you're comfortable losing, and track calls and quotes that came from Yelp.
4. Compare the cost per enquiry with what you pay elsewhere, such as Google ads or lead sites, and keep whichever brings customers cheapest.