For most plastic surgeons, no, not as a first paid channel in 2026. Yelp’s own pricing page lists Yelp Ads from $150 a month and the Upgrade Package at $180 a month, and Yelp’s 2025 Form 10-K reports that average cost per click rose 10 percent in 2025 while ad clicks fell 7 percent. A free Google Business Profile and a claimed RealSelf profile should be finished before Yelp gets a dollar.
The category detail makes the case sharper. Yelp’s 10-K groups health and beauty businesses with restaurants and shopping in a segment it calls Restaurants, Retail & Other, and that segment’s advertising revenue fell 6 percent in 2025. Yelp’s second quarter 2026 shareholder letter says the same segment fell another 10 percent on fewer clicks and lower prices. That is the slice of Yelp a cosmetic practice buys into.
Below: what Yelp charges, what paying changes about your reviews, how Yelp compares with Google Business Profile, RealSelf, Healthgrades, Zocdoc, Vitals, NewBeauty and Allure, and when a test is worth running.
Not sure Yelp is where your patients look first? Check whether AI assistants recommend your practice.
What does Yelp charge a plastic surgery practice in 2026?
Yelp’s local business pricing page lists four tiers: a free Business Page, Yelp Ads from $150 a month, the Upgrade Package at $180 a month, and both together from $270 a month. The page notes that minimum budgets are subject to change. Ads are priced by auction per click, so the monthly figure is a budget cap, not a fixed fee.
Here is what each tier includes, using Yelp’s own descriptions.
1. Free Yelp Business Page
Claiming the page costs nothing and includes more than 20 free features, such as review replies and messages. The same pricing page says 2.4 million people visit Yelp every day on average, across every category, not only cosmetic searches.
2. Yelp Ads
Yelp Ads places your practice in “Sponsored Results” above and below organic search results and on competitor pages, per Yelp’s ads FAQ. The FAQ says you can spend “as little as $5 per day on average” and that self-serve advertisers have no term contracts. The 10-K explains the pricing: Yelp runs an auction for each placement, and its bidding algorithms are designed to spend your budget and “maximize ad clicks.”
3. Upgrade Package
Yelp lists up to seven features, including Business Highlights badges, a call to action button, a logo, a photo slideshow, Yelp Connect posts, and removal of competitor ads from your page. Yelp’s upgrades page puts the standard price at $6 per day on average, with a 14 day free trial and a monthly bill after that.
4. Ads plus Upgrade
The bundle starts at $270 a month and adds a verified license display. By our arithmetic from Yelp’s published monthly prices, that is $3,240 a year, against $1,800 for Yelp Ads alone at the floor and $2,160 for the Upgrade Package alone.
Why is the no-buy case so strong for cosmetic practices?
Because Yelp’s own filings describe a platform where click prices rose while clicks fell, and a shrinking segment that includes health and beauty businesses. The 10-K reports 2025 ad clicks down 7 percent and average cost per click up 10 percent across the platform. Yelp’s filing even explains what that pattern means.
In the same 10-K, Yelp writes that “growth in average CPC paired with a negative or lower growth rate in ad clicks would indicate we charged more without delivering more ad clicks,” and that it would expect this to hurt advertiser retention. Yelp’s 2025 platform totals match that pattern.
The segment data matters more for a surgeon than the total. The 10-K defines Restaurants, Retail & Other as restaurants, shopping, beauty and fitness, health, and other. In 2025 that segment brought in $443.7 million in advertising revenue, down 6 percent, and its average paying advertising locations fell 8 percent, from 274,000 to 253,000. The growth story Yelp tells investors lives in its Services segment of home, auto and professional businesses, which grew advertising revenue 8 percent to $947.6 million.
The trend held in 2026. Yelp’s second quarter 2026 shareholder letter reports ad clicks down 5 percent, average cost per click up 1 percent, and Restaurants, Retail & Other advertising revenue down 10 percent to about $102 million.
None of that proves Yelp cannot send a consult. It does mean the auction is built to spend budget on clicks, and clicks are not consults.
Does paying Yelp change your reviews or star rating?
No. Yelp’s 10-K says its recommendation software “applies the same objective standards to each review, regardless of whether the business being reviewed advertises on Yelp,” and that no employee, owner or reviewer can override it for an individual business. Advertising buys placement. It does not buy reputation.
As of December 31, 2025, Yelp’s 10-K says about 76 percent of reviews submitted were recommended and about 15 percent were not recommended but still visible on secondary pages. Not recommended reviews do not count toward your star rating, and their status can change as Yelp reassesses them.
Yelp’s Content Guidelines say: “Businesses should never ask customers to write reviews.” A post consult text with a Yelp link is what the software screens for. Yelp’s 2025 Trust & Safety Report says it placed 491 Compensated Activity and Suspicious Review Activity alerts on business pages in 2025 and filtered out nearly 500,000 suspected AI generated reviews. A Consumer Alert sits above the reviews on your page, where prospective patients see it.
Medical practices have one more line to watch: a reply that confirms someone was your patient can raise privacy issues. The HHS Office for Civil Rights announced a $10,000 settlement with a dental practice over social media disclosures of patients’ protected health information in October 2019. Keep replies general and have your compliance counsel review your reply template. Our post on Yelp vs Google reviews for cosmetic practices covers the request rules on both platforms.
How does Yelp compare with Google, RealSelf, Healthgrades and Zocdoc?
Yelp Ads is the only option here that bills per click in a general consumer marketplace. Google Business Profile is free, RealSelf focuses on cosmetic research, Healthgrades is a credential directory, and Zocdoc bills per new patient booking.
| Option | Pricing model | What you get | Number the owner publishes | Our take |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yelp Ads | Auction cost per click; from $150 a month, cancel anytime | Sponsored Results placement and ads on competitor pages | Platform CPC up 10%, clicks down 7% in 2025 (10-K) | Skip unless your metro is Yelp heavy, then cap it and track it |
| Yelp Upgrade only | $180 a month, $6 a day on average, 14 day trial | Removes competitor ads from your page, logo, slideshow, call to action | 94% of users in a Yelp survey preferred upgraded listings; no method published | Worth the free trial if competitors already advertise on your page |
| Free Yelp page | Free | Claimed listing, review replies, messages, photos | 2.4M daily visitors across all categories | Claim it, correct it, leave it alone |
| Google Business Profile | Free, per Google | Search and Maps listing, reviews, photos, hours | Not published per listing | Do this first, every practice |
| RealSelf | Not published; contact an advisor | Verified badge, ad free profile upgrade, spotlights, native ads | 5.2M consumers connected with providers | Best paid test for a cosmetic practice willing to answer patient questions |
| Healthgrades | Free claimed profile; paid programs not priced | Profile managed by the physician or an authorized representative | Not published for cosmetic searches | Keep it accurate; low effort, low priority |
| Zocdoc | No upfront or subscription fee; per booking fee varies | Discovery bookings from new patients | Fee amounts not published | Fits practices with open consult slots and some insurance visits |
Vitals publishes no provider price we could find, so keep the listing accurate and do not budget for it. NewBeauty sells a Top Doctor program with no published price, which we broke down in is NewBeauty worth it for a plastic surgeon. Allure and other beauty titles quote surgeons on editorial merit, which costs time or a publicist rather than a placement fee.
One catch on Zocdoc: its provider help center says the booking fee is charged at booking, whether or not the patient attends.
When is Yelp advertising worth it for a plastic surgeon?
When patients in your market already use Yelp to choose surgeons, and when competitors are advertising on your page. Outside those two conditions, the money does more work in Google Business Profile, RealSelf or a tracked Google Ads test.
A 2022 Aesthetic Surgery Journal analysis of 11,078 reviews of plastic surgeons across six US metros found Yelp reviews concentrated in Los Angeles, Google in Houston, and RealSelf in Miami, Philadelphia, New York City and Chicago. Count the Yelp reviews on your five nearest competitors before you assume either way.
Yelp’s ads FAQ says ads can appear on competitors’ pages, so a patient reading your reviews may see a rival surgeon’s ad on your own listing. Removing those ads is a feature of the Upgrade Package, not Yelp Ads. If that is your only Yelp concern, start the 14 day Upgrade trial and skip the ad budget.
A Yelp test can fit when competitors’ Yelp review counts rival their Google counts, when patients name Yelp on your intake form unprompted, and when you already know your cost per consult from another paid channel. Pass when most consults come from Google Maps, RealSelf or referrals, or when nobody will track calls back to a source.
If you test, set a budget you could lose without regret, put a dedicated tracking number on the listing, and run it for 90 days. Yelp’s ads FAQ says self-serve advertisers can cancel at any time without penalty. Divide spend by booked consults, not clicks. At the $150 floor, one booked consult a quarter works out to $450 per consult, and that is the number to compare against the method in is Google Ads worth it for a plastic surgery practice.
Does Yelp affect whether AI assistants name your practice?
Nobody has published a controlled test that answers this for cosmetic practices, and we have not run one. What is documented is that Yelp licenses its data. Its business site lists a Yelp Places API and a Yelp AI API, and its second quarter 2026 letter says other revenue rose 98 percent to $33 million, driven in part by data licensing.
Yelp’s ads page also promotes an agency case study claiming Yelp ads lifted a home services brand’s AI citations by 28 percent. It covers a different category and publishes no method we could check, so treat it as a claim.
The safer move is consistency. Keep your practice name, address, phone and hours identical on Yelp, Google Business Profile, RealSelf, Healthgrades and Vitals, and keep reviews arriving on Google, where requests are allowed. Earning mentions from independent sources is the other half of that job. It is the work described on our AEO for plastic surgeons page, and it sits alongside the free listings rather than replacing them.
FAQ
How much does Yelp advertising cost per month for a doctor?
Yelp’s local business pricing page lists Yelp Ads from $150 a month, the Upgrade Package at $180 a month, and both together from $270 a month, with minimum budgets subject to change. Ads are priced by auction per click, so your actual cost per click depends on competition. Yelp’s 2025 Form 10-K reports platform average cost per click rose 10 percent in 2025. Yelp publishes no medical or cosmetic specific click price.
Can I pay Yelp to remove bad reviews?
No. Yelp’s 2025 Form 10-K says its recommendation software applies the same standards to every review whether or not a business advertises, and that no employee, business owner or reviewer can override it for an individual business. Advertising buys placement in search results and on competitor pages. It does not change which reviews are recommended or how your star rating is calculated. Report only reviews that break Yelp’s content guidelines.
Can I remove competitor ads from my Yelp page?
Yes, through the Upgrade Package rather than Yelp Ads. Yelp’s upgrades page lists “remove competitor ads” among up to seven features, alongside a logo, slideshow and call to action button. The standard price is $6 per day on average, about $180 a month on Yelp’s pricing page, with a 14 day free trial. If competitor ads on your page are your main concern, the trial is the cheapest way to test.
Is it against Yelp’s rules to ask patients for reviews?
Yes. Yelp’s Content Guidelines say businesses should never ask customers to write reviews, and its recommendation software looks for reviews it suspects were solicited. Reviews it suspects were solicited can land in the not recommended section, which does not count toward your rating. Google allows review requests as long as you offer nothing in return, so point your request process at Google and let Yelp reviews arrive on their own.
Is Yelp or RealSelf better for a plastic surgeon?
For most cosmetic practices, RealSelf is the better first paid test. It focuses on cosmetic procedures, offers a Verified badge and profile upgrades, and its advertising page says 5.2 million consumers have connected with providers there. RealSelf does not publish prices. Yelp publishes prices but sits in a segment where its own filings show advertising revenue falling. Yelp can win in metros where patients already review surgeons there, such as Los Angeles.
Can I cancel Yelp Ads anytime?
Yes, for self-serve accounts. Yelp’s ads FAQ says there are no term contracts for self-serve advertisers and that you can cancel at any time without penalty. The Upgrade Package bills monthly after its 14 day trial and can also be canceled. Read the terms of any contract a Yelp sales rep sends, because a negotiated agreement may differ from self-serve terms. Set a calendar reminder before any trial ends.
The short answer
Think of Yelp as a $1,800 to $3,240 a year decision, built from Yelp’s own published monthly prices, that has to produce booked consults you can count. Yelp’s filings show rising click prices, falling clicks, and a shrinking segment that includes health and beauty. Paying will not change your reviews, and asking patients for Yelp reviews breaks its rules. Claim the free page, keep it accurate, try the Upgrade trial if rivals advertise on your listing, and fund Google Business Profile and RealSelf before any Yelp ad budget.
Want to see which sources speak for your practice before you sign with anyone? Ask for a free practice visibility audit.
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