Ecological restoration and governance is a key strategic measure for building an ecological civilization, ensuring national ecological security, and promoting the green transformation and high-quality development of the economy and society. As an important water source area and ecological function zone in China, the ecological restoration and governance of the Yellow River Basin is of great significance to China’s ecological civilization construction. This paper takes 56 cities in the Yellow River Basin as the research sample, and constructs an evaluation index system for the degree of ecological restoration of cities in the Yellow River Basin from four aspects: water resource utilization, ecological absorption capacity, ecological environmental protection capacity, and ecological carrying capacity. The entropy weight Topsis method is used to measure the degree of ecological restoration of each city in the Yellow River Basin from 2011 to 2022, and the measurement results are analyzed using the time series evolution characteristics and Kernel Density method. The results indicate that: ① Overall, the level of urban ecological restoration in the Yellow River Basin demonstrates a consistent upward trend, accompanied by an accelerating pace of development. A cross-sectional analysis reveals significant disparities in the ecological restoration index among the cities within the basin. Throughout the study period, the ecological restoration efforts across the 56 cities exhibite positive momentum, along with a notable dynamic convergence in ecological restoration levels, leading to a gradual reduction of differences among cities. ② An examination of the subsystem indices indicates a favorable trend in the overall level of urban ecological restoration in the Yellow River Basin. The ranking of growth in the ecological restoration indices for the four subsystems is as follows: ecological absorption capacity > water resource utilization capacity > ecological carrying capacity > ecological protection capacity. Furthermore, the Tobit model is utilized to investigate the driving factors influencing urban ecological restoration in the Yellow River Basin. The results reveal that levels of economic development, financial support, industrial structure transformation, green innovation, and government engagement significantly contribute to the enhancement of urban ecological restoration levels. The import and export trade that is open to the outside world emerges as a primary inhibitory force, significantly suppressing the advancement of ecological restoration in the Yellow River Basin.