Yandex Business Plans: What Was Taken Away from the Free Listing

In August 2026, owners of Yandex Maps listings discovered that some of the tools they were used to had stopped working. Stories disappeared from their listings, the button for publishing news posts stopped responding, and product photos vanished. Support politely explains that the service is being improved so businesses can get more value from their listings. What actually happened is that Yandex started charging separately for listing features that had previously been free.

Let’s look at exactly what moved behind the paywall, what it costs on actual bills, which tools are still free, and how to work out in one evening whether you need to pay.

What moved to paid plans

Business listings now have three tiers: Basic, Advanced, and Premium. Basic is free and has no expiration; the other two require a subscription. The rollout began gradually in mid-July, with changes becoming widespread by August 20, and some accounts are still operating under the old rules. There was no big announcement: businesses find out about the change in the model through a notification in their account.

The logic is clear: everything customers need to find and call you remains free. What became paid is everything that brings the listing to life—regular content, a photo-filled showcase, and control over the first screen.

There’s a nuance in the row about products and services that many people miss. The items themselves, with prices and descriptions, remain on Basic; only the photos disappear. For a workshop or salon, that means customers can still see the price list, but not what the work looks like.

What it costs on actual bills

There’s no single price list for the Advanced plan. The price is calculated for each listing based on the city, category, and density of competitors. Agency reviews that included screenshots of bills show the following range for 90 days.

The difference between the lowest and highest amounts is 2,4 times, and it depends not on the range of features, but on how valuable the algorithm considers your customers to be. The Premium plan starts at around 15 000 ₽ for the same 90 days, but there you’re paying for ad reach, not listing features.

You can pay for 90, 180, or 360 days; longer periods come with discounts of around 12 and 25 percent. It’s understandable to be tempted by the annual discount, but the model has been rolling out for less than two months, and the plans are still changing. It makes more sense to start with 90 days, even if you pay a quarter more: that’s the price of being able to walk away if it doesn’t work.

Seven days to decide—and what happens to content that’s already been published

Once the notification appears in your account, you have a week to choose. If you don’t, your listing is automatically moved to Basic.

Published content isn’t deleted, though. Stories, posts, and product photos remain in your account, but Maps users can no longer see them. Subscribe later and everything will come back without having to upload it again. The Stories haven’t disappeared; they’ve been switched off.

Those who had been managing their listings for years got the worst of it. Links to posts shared in newsletters and messengers now lead nowhere, and a promotion that customers only knew about from the listing feed ceased to exist on the very day the waiting week ended.

So here’s the first thing to do today: download your content while it’s still available in your account. The post text, product photos, and Story covers were created at your expense and will come in handy on your website, social media, and in 2GIS—regardless of what Yandex comes up with in the next version of its plans.

They took away not decoration, but fuel for behavioral signals

If you think of Stories and posts as window dressing, the loss seems bearable. The problem is that Maps listings are ranked largely based on people’s behavior: calls, route requests, website visits, photo views, and recent reviews. Posts and Stories were a free way to give people a reason to interact with a listing—and interactions are exactly what the algorithm treats as a sign of an active business.

This creates a situation where one of the few free ways to influence visibility is now being sold. Specialists who analyzed Maps ranking factors this year estimate that ratings and reviews together account for around 40 percent, with the rest split among category relevance, location, listing completeness, and owner activity. Of these, activity is the one that became paid.

One clarification before you head to checkout: the plan doesn’t bring you views. It removes a restriction on features you already know how to use. The same number of people who open your listing now will keep opening it—Advanced helps convert those people, not attract new ones. We covered the mechanics of artificially boosting behavioral signals in our article on services that manipulate behavioral signals; it also shows why natural reasons to click cost less than any kind of fakery.

How to calculate whether Advanced pays off

Don’t ask “Is it worth paying Yandex?” Ask “How many deals does a quarter of the subscription need to bring in to break even?” The process takes about twenty minutes.

• Step 1. Check the price you were quoted. Don’t use the average 10 080 ₽ from reviews; use the amount shown to you specifically—it can differ by as much as half.
• Step 2. Divide it by the margin from one customer. With a bill of 10 080 ₽ and a margin of 3 000 ₽, the break-even point is 3,4 customer over 90 days—that’s a little more than one a month. With a margin of 800 ₽, you need 13 customers to break even, which is a different story.
• Step 3. Check your listing statistics for the previous quarter. You need two figures: how many people opened the listing and how many of them took a desired action. Market estimates for conversion from a listing view to a call hover around 1,3 percent, so with 900 views per quarter, you get around a dozen inquiries.
• Step 4. Estimate the contribution of the content itself. The statistics show how many views your posts and Stories received before they were switched off. If they accounted for a significant share of interactions, the plan buys back that share. If a couple of people looked at them, you’d be paying for a feature you didn’t use.
• Step 5. Buy 90 days and measure the results. Before you start, record the number of calls, route requests, and website visits, and add a UTM tag to the link in your listing. Compare the numbers a quarter later—without that tag, you’ll be arguing with yourself based on guesswork.

For a beauty salon, auto repair shop, or clinic, where a customer brings in several thousand rubles and comes back, the break-even point is reached in one or two visits. For a business with a margin of a couple of hundred rubles per sale, the math usually doesn’t work out, and the honest answer is to stay on Basic.

What’s still free and works just as well as Stories

The Basic plan leaves untouched the group of ranking factors that matters most. While competitors debate the subscription, you can take care of these things for free.

• Reviews and response time. Ratings and a steady stream of recent reviews are the most important part of ranking, and they cost nothing. Responding to a review within a day helps visibility more than posting a Story once a week.
• Accurate categories. Your primary and additional categories determine which searches you appear in at all. Choosing the wrong category costs more than not having Stories.
• Business photos. They haven’t been affected: you can and should take photos of your premises, work, and team. You can’t pin the main photo, and the algorithm chooses the order—so it’s better to delete weak shots to keep a random one from appearing at the top.
• Up-to-date information. Opening hours, holiday schedules, phone numbers, website link. The algorithm also checks whether the owner updates the listing.
• Online booking. It remains free and lets customers take the desired action within Maps, without visiting your website.
• Products and services list. Even without photos, it still has prices and descriptions, is still indexed, and answers the question “How much does it cost?”—the reason people open the listing in the first place.
• Dealing with duplicate listings. Two listings for the same location split reviews and behavioral signals between them. Merging duplicates is free and makes a noticeable difference.

Where to move your activity

Posts on Maps were convenient because they required neither a website nor an audience: customers came from search and immediately saw the promotion. Now that channel is paid, so it’s worth distributing your content across platforms where it remains yours.

2GIS has followed the same model for a long time: a free directory listing plus paid enhancements to move up the list, add a logo, or include an action button. You can’t expect a free feed there, but a listing in 2GIS gives you a second source of local traffic, so it’s worth filling out at least for that reason.

Your own website is the only platform where your content can’t be switched off with seven days’ notice. A news and promotions section serves the same purpose as the feed in your listing and also helps with search. How to build one without the usual beginner mistakes is explained in our article on the right order of work for a website that sells.

Messengers and social media keep you in touch with people who have already bought from you. Stories you made for Maps can be moved there without any changes—the format is the same.

What to do over the coming week

• Log in to your Yandex Business account and check whether you’ve received a notification about the plans and how many days you have left to choose.
• Download the post text, Story covers, and product photos while they’re still available in your account.
• Write down your statistics for the last 90 days: listing views, calls, route requests, and website visits. This is your baseline.
• Calculate the break-even point using your quoted price and your margin, not figures from reviews.
• Take care of the free basics: categories, current opening hours, replies to every unanswered review, removing weak photos, and merging duplicates.
• If you decide to pay, choose 90 days, add a UTM tag to the link, and agree with yourself on a renewal criterion in advance.
• If you decide not to pay, move your promotions feed to your website and messengers, and check your listing in 2GIS.

The plan model is new and will almost certainly change again: packages are being revised, prices recalculated, and some accounts still haven’t been moved over. The only way to protect yourself from the next such email from support is not to keep all your local traffic in a single listing you don’t own.