Under the concept of “ecological priority and green development”, the Yellow River Basin, as an important ecological barrier and industrial base in China, requires enhanced ecological resilience in its urban agglomerations to achieve the Chinese modernization of “harmonious coexistence between humans and nature”.Based on the data of 49 cities in the 7 major urban agglomerations of the Yellow River Basin from 2014 to 2023, this paper employs the entropy weight method to measure urban ecological resilience, combines the Dagum Gini coefficient decomposition method to analyze regional differences, and uses the obstacle degree model to identify key obstacle factors. This paper finds that the urban agglomerations in the lower reaches of the Yellow River have strong ecological resilience, while those in the middle and upper reaches are constrained by factors, such as lagging pollution control, insufficient ecological restoration capacity, and unbalanced industrial structure, hindering ecological resilience improvement; the “siphon effect” and inter-regional differences in the core cities in the region are the main reasons for the uneven distribution of ecological resilience; especially, the dependence on industrial paths and weak technological support in energy-based cities exacerbate the ecological resilience gap; and lagging governance capacity, insufficient ecological space, unbalanced industrial structure, and insufficient technological investment are key factors impeding the improvement of ecological resilience.