30 Yelp Statistics 2026: Users, Demographics and Reviews

Yelp in 2026 is smaller than its old reputation suggests, but it still matters for local businesses.

Its app reaches about 28 million devices a month, its US users skew older and wealthier than most people expect, and about 1 in 4 reviews never counts toward a star rating.

Below are the numbers business owners ask about most. Who uses Yelp, how many reviews it holds, how its filter works, what advertisers are seeing, and where AI now fits in.

Key Yelp Statistics

Ten numbers that sum up Yelp right now.

Metric	Latest figure
Monthly app unique devices (2025 average)	28 million
Cumulative reviews (end of 2025)	330 million
New reviews added in 2025	22 million
US users aged 55 or older	43%
US users in $100K+ households	53%
Reviews that don’t count toward ratings	24%
Suspected AI reviews filtered in 2025	Nearly 500,000
Yelp revenue in 2025	$1.46 billion
Paying advertising locations (Q2 2026)	510,000
Share of ad revenue from service businesses	70%

How Many People Use Yelp?

Yelp doesn’t publish monthly active users. Its closest measure, app unique devices, averaged 28 million a month in 2025.

1. The Yelp app averaged 28 million unique devices a month in 2025.

2. App unique devices were down 2% year over year in 2025, as consumers visited restaurants less often.

3. Yelp held 330 million cumulative reviews at the end of 2025, up 7% from 308 million a year earlier.

4. Users added 22 million new reviews in 2025, roughly 60,000 a day.

5. Active claimed business locations grew 8% year over year in the fourth quarter of 2025.

Reviews keep piling up even as app traffic flattens, which is why Yelp’s content still shows up across search and AI answers.

Who Uses Yelp? Demographics

Yelp’s US audience is older, more educated, and higher-earning than the general population. Here’s the split from Yelp’s own fact sheet.

Group	Breakdown of US Yelp users
Age	18 to 34: 26% · 35 to 54: 31% · 55+: 43%
Education	No college: 27% · College: 58% · Grad school: 15%
Household income	Under $60K: 24% · $60K to $99K: 23% · $100K+: 53%

6. 43% of US Yelp users are 55 or older, the largest age group on the platform.

7. 53% of US Yelp users live in households earning $100,000 or more a year.

8. 73% of US Yelp users went to college, including 15% with a graduate degree.

For a local business, that means Yelp reaches buyers with money to spend on services, not just people hunting for cheap lunch spots.

Do People Still Use Yelp in 2026?

Yes, though how they use it is changing. App installs and page views rose year over year in mid-2026, and more people now ask Yelp’s AI assistant for help instead of scrolling through results.

9. Yelp Assistant generated about 10% of all Request-a-Quote projects in the second quarter of 2026.

10. Request-a-Quote projects started through Yelp Assistant grew more than 400% in 2025.

11. Total Request-a-Quote projects grew about 10% year over year in the second quarter of 2026.

Yelp’s reviews also reach people who never open Yelp. Its ratings and reviews now power local answers inside ChatGPT for relevant categories.

Yelp Review Statistics

Yelp reviews lean positive, with a smaller cluster of very unhappy customers at the other end.

12. 55% of Yelp reviews are 5 stars, 15% are 4 stars, 7% are 3 stars, 6% are 2 stars, and 18% are 1 star.

13. 38% of US businesses with five or more reviews average 4 to 4.5 stars, and 16% hold a perfect 5.

14. Home and local services make up 21% of reviewed businesses, ahead of restaurants at 16%, shopping at 15%, and beauty and fitness at 11%.

15. A one-star increase in Yelp rating led to a 5% to 9% increase in revenue for independent restaurants in a Harvard Business School study.

That last finding applied to independent restaurants, not chains. Shoppers lean on reviews most when they don’t already know the brand.

How Does Yelp’s Review Filter Work?

Yelp’s automated recommendation software scores every review using hundreds of signals. Only recommended reviews count toward a business’s star rating, and no employee or business owner can override it.

16. Of all reviews ever contributed to Yelp, 76% are recommended, 14% are not recommended, and 10% were removed.

17. Of the 22 million reviews posted in 2025, 70% were recommended, 17% were not recommended, 11% were removed by Yelp, and 2% were deleted by their authors.

18. The recommended share of new reviews fell from 78% in 2024 to 70% in 2025, as Yelp tightened its filter on AI-written and low-detail reviews.

Not-recommended reviews stay visible on a separate tab, but most visitors never click through. Our online review statistics show how other platforms handle the same problem.

How Yelp Fights Fake and AI Reviews

Enforcement jumped in 2025 as AI tools made fake reviews and fake accounts cheaper to produce.

19. Yelp’s automated systems filtered out nearly 500,000 suspected AI-generated reviews in 2025.

20. Yelp closed more than 1.3 million user accounts in 2025, up 138% from 2024, including 889,800 fake airline phone-support accounts.

21. Yelp removed over 193,700 reported reviews in 2025, and 25% of them didn’t reflect a firsthand experience.

22. Nearly 2,000 accounts were closed for links to review exchange rings, a 49% increase from 2024.

23. Alerts placed on business pages after viral incidents rose 58% in 2025, leading to the removal of more than 80,000 reviews.

The same filter that frustrates honest businesses is also what keeps Yelp from being flooded with fakes. Our fake review statistics cover the problem across every major site.

Yelp Revenue and Advertising Statistics

Yelp makes most of its money from local ads, and service businesses now carry that revenue while restaurants and retail shrink.

24. Yelp earned a record $1.46 billion in revenue in 2025, up 4%, with $146 million in net income.

25. Revenue reached $376 million in the second quarter of 2026, up 1% year over year.

26. Service businesses generate 70% of Yelp’s advertising revenue, and restaurants, retail, and other categories the remaining 30%.

27. About 510,000 business locations paid for Yelp ads in the second quarter of 2026, split almost evenly between services and restaurants, retail, and other.

28. Yelp ad clicks fell 5% year over year in the second quarter of 2026, while the average cost per click rose 1%.

29. Yelp brought in roughly $2,730 in ad revenue per paying location in 2025, or about $230 a month.

30. Yelp’s other revenue, which includes data licensing and its Hatch AI tools, nearly doubled to $33 million in the second quarter of 2026.

Yelp doesn’t publish a price list. Advertisers set their own budgets and pay per click, so track cost per lead, not just clicks.

How to Use These Numbers

• Ask for detailed reviews after a real visit. Short, vague reviews from new accounts are the ones most likely to be filtered.
• Price for the audience. Yelp users skew older and higher-income, so premium services often do better there than discount offers.
• Measure ads by leads, not clicks. Rising cost per click means a cheap-looking campaign can still lose money.
• Show your reviews off Yelp too. Putting your best Yelp reviews on your website carries that trust to visitors who never open the app.

For the bigger picture across platforms, compare these numbers with our Google review statistics.

Wrap Up

Yelp is no longer the default first stop for every local search, but it still reaches a valuable, high-intent audience.

Focus on what you control. Earn detailed reviews, watch ad spend against real leads, and treat Yelp as one strong channel among several.

Sources

Yelp Fact Sheet | Yelp Q4 2025 Letter to Shareholders | Yelp Q2 2026 Letter to Shareholders | Yelp 2025 Form 10-K | Yelp 2025 Trust & Safety Report | Yelp 2024 Trust & Safety Report | Luca, Harvard Business School