Yelp Business Data API - Search, Business Detail, Reviews

Yelp via Scavio

Search Yelp businesses in a metro, read one business in full, and page through its reviews. All endpoints return structured JSON.

When to trigger

Use this skill when the user asks to:

• Find local businesses by term and location, in Yelp's ranked order
• Filter by price band, open-now, or Yelp's own attribute aliases
• Pull one business in full - rating histogram, price band, categories, address and coordinates, phone, website and menu links, hours and holidays, amenities, photos, popular items, health inspections, Q&A, licences, claim status
• Read review bodies with author expertise, attached photos, reaction counts and the owner's response
• Build local-lead lists, reputation monitors or competitor comp sets

Setup

Get a free API key at scavio.dev (50 free credits to get started, no card required):

export SCAVIO_API_KEY=sk_live_your_key

Every request is a POST with a JSON body and:

Authorization: Bearer $SCAVIO_API_KEY

Endpoints

Base URL: https://api.scavio.dev. Every Yelp endpoint costs 2 credits.

Workflow

1. Find businesses: call /yelp/search with term and location (or a full yelp.com/search URL as url). Read businesses[].business_id or alias.
2. One business: call /yelp/business with that business_id - an alias like desnudo-coffee-austin-2, the opaque encid, or a yelp.com/biz URL all work. This already includes page 1 of the reviews.
3. More reviews: call /yelp/reviews starting at page: 2.

The two ways to waste 2 credits

• /yelp/reviews with page: 1 re-fetches the document /business already returned. It is the same content for another 2 credits. Always start review paging at page 2.
• A search without location is answered off the proxy exit, so the same request reports on a different metro from one run to the next. location is effectively required even though the schema allows a url instead.

Pagination

Yelp fixes the page size at 10 for both search and reviews.

• /search takes a 1-based page. count is the 10-row page, total_results is Yelp's headline count, results_per_page and start are echoed back.
• /reviews takes a 1-based page and carries has_next_page. A page past the last review is a 404, not an empty result - stop on has_next_page: false.
• /business takes no paging parameter.

Parameters

Search (/search)

(term AND location) or url is required.

sort is closed - Yelp ignores an unrecognised sort and serves default ranking under a 200, so an invented value buys a premium scrape of a sort that never ran. attributes is the opposite: a deliberate passthrough, because Yelp's vocabulary runs to roughly 117 aliases per vertical. An alias Yelp does not know is ignored upstream and the results come back unfiltered - so check that the filter you asked for is reflected in the results before reporting it as applied.

Business (/business)

Reviews (/reviews)

Examples

import requests

BASE = "https://api.scavio.dev"
# Your key from https://scavio.dev. Load it from your environment or secret
# store in real code - keep it out of source control.
API_KEY = "sk_your_key_here"
HEADERS = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {API_KEY}"}

# 1. Always send location - a location-less search follows the proxy exit
found = requests.post(f"{BASE}/api/v1/yelp/search", headers=HEADERS,
    json={"term": "coffee", "location": "Austin, TX",
          "sort": "review_count", "price": [1, 2], "open_now": True}).json()

row = found["data"]["businesses"][0]

# 2. Full business record - page 1 of the reviews rides along free
biz = requests.post(f"{BASE}/api/v1/yelp/business", headers=HEADERS,
    json={"business_id": row["alias"]}).json()["data"]

print(biz["rating"], biz["review_count"], biz["not_recommended_review_count"])
first_page_reviews = biz["reviews"]

# 3. Page PAST it. Never ask for page 1 here - it is the same 2 credits twice.
more = requests.post(f"{BASE}/api/v1/yelp/reviews", headers=HEADERS,
    json={"business_id": row["alias"], "page": 2, "sort": "newest"}).json()["data"]

# 4. One-star reviews only: filtered_review_count is the count that matches
one_star = requests.post(f"{BASE}/api/v1/yelp/reviews", headers=HEADERS,
    json={"business_id": row["alias"], "rating": 1, "page": 2}).json()["data"]
print(one_star["filtered_review_count"], "of", one_star["review_count"])

Paging reviews, stopping on the signal Yelp actually gives:

def review_pages(business_id, start=2, max_pages=4, **body):
    """10 per page, 2 credits per page. Page 1 came free with /business."""
    out = []
    for page in range(start, start + max_pages):
        data = requests.post(f"{BASE}/api/v1/yelp/reviews", headers=HEADERS,
                             json={"business_id": business_id, "page": page, **body}).json()["data"]
        out += data["reviews"]
        if not data["has_next_page"]:      # past the last page is a billed 404
            break
    return out

Response shapes

Every response uses the envelope { data, response_time, credits_used, credits_remaining }. Key data fields:

• search — term, location, url, location_display, city, state, country, latitude, longitude, bounds, categories, vertical, sort, attributes, open_now, breadcrumbs, total_results, results_per_page, page, start, related_searches, count, businesses[] (pos, business_id, alias, name, url, rank, is_ad, rating, review_count, price_range, categories, address, street_address, city, state, postal_code, country, neighborhoods, timezone, hours, image, images, photos, snippet, tags, actions, highlights, is_yelp_guaranteed, has_verified_license, is_service_area_business).
• business — business_id, alias, name, url, summary, specialties, history, year_established, rating, review_count, rating_distribution, not_recommended_review_count, review_counts_by_language, price_range, categories, phone, website, menu_url, address, city, state, postal_code, country, neighborhoods, timezone, latitude, longitude, service_areas, hours[], hours_today, is_open_now, is_closed, holidays, attributes, amenities, popular_items[], popular_items_omitted, review_highlights, health_inspections, question_count, questions, is_claimed, is_advertiser, verified_licenses, messaging_response_time, filtered_review_count, reviews[] (page 1).
• reviews — business_id, alias, name, url, rating, review_count, rating_distribution, filtered_review_count, sort, rating_filter, start, page, has_next_page, count, reviews[] (pos, review_id, url, rating, text, language, published_date, experience_date, author, author_url, author_photo, author_expertise, author_expertise_count, photos, videos, reactions, is_first_review, previous_review_count, owner_response, owner_response_date, owner_response_from, appreciated_by_owner).

{
  "data": {
    "term": "coffee",
    "location": "Austin, TX",
    "page": 1,
    "start": 0,
    "results_per_page": 10,
    "total_results": 240,
    "count": 10,
    "businesses": [
      {
        "pos": 1,
        "business_id": "kQ7pCn2m0Vx9",
        "alias": "desnudo-coffee-austin-2",
        "name": "Desnudo Coffee",
        "rating": 4.5,
        "review_count": 2153,
        "price_range": "$",
        "categories": ["Coffee & Tea"],
        "city": "Austin",
        "state": "TX",
        "url": "https://www.yelp.com/biz/desnudo-coffee-austin-2"
      }
    ]
  },
  "credits_used": 2,
  "credits_remaining": 998
}

Guardrails

• Every call is 2 credits, including one that comes back empty. Yelp is on the premium proxy table - budget before paging.
• Never call /reviews with page: 1. /business already returned that page; the repeat is 2 credits for a duplicate.
• Always send location. Without it the answer is about wherever the request exited, and it can differ between two identical runs.
• Never invent a sort value. An unrecognised sort is ignored and you pay for default ranking.
• attributes is a passthrough, so an alias Yelp does not recognise silently disappears. Verify the filter took effect before telling the user it was applied.
• rating on /reviews changes filtered_review_count, not review_count. Quote the right one.
• Yelp's recommendation software hides some reviews entirely. Those are never returned and are counted in not_recommended_review_count - so the reviews you can read are not the whole picture, and an average you compute yourself will not match Yelp's.
• popular_items can arrive as stub shells; those rows are dropped and popular_items_omitted flags it. If that flag is true, do not claim the item list is complete.
• Never fabricate business names, ratings, addresses, hours or review text. Only return what the API returned.
• Always include the business url so the user can verify.

Failure handling

• 400 means an invalid or missing parameter - term without location and no url, a sort outside its enum, or more than 20 attributes. Fix and retry.
• 401 means the API key is invalid or missing. Check SCAVIO_API_KEY.
• 404 means the business does not exist, or the review page is past the last one. Stop on has_next_page: false rather than discovering the end with a billed 404.
• 429 means rate or usage limit exceeded. Wait before retrying. See https://scavio.dev/docs/rate-limits.
• 502 / 503 mean upstream is temporarily unavailable - wait a few seconds and retry, up to a few times.
• An empty search is usually the filters: drop open_now, widen price, or use a broader term.
• If SCAVIO_API_KEY is not set, prompt the user to export it before continuing.

SDKs

pip install scavio==0.15.0

from scavio import ScavioClient

client = ScavioClient()  # reads SCAVIO_API_KEY

found = client.yelp.search(term="coffee", location="Austin, TX", sort="review_count")
alias = found["data"]["businesses"][0]["alias"]

biz = client.yelp.business(business_id=alias)          # includes page 1 of reviews
more = client.yelp.reviews(business_id=alias, page=2)  # start at 2, never 1

npm install scavio@0.15.0

import { Scavio } from "scavio";

const client = new Scavio(); // reads SCAVIO_API_KEY
const found = await client.yelp.search({ term: "coffee", location: "Austin, TX" });
const more = await client.yelp.reviews({ business_id: found.data.businesses[0].alias, page: 2 });