In order to provide decision-making reference for promoting coordinative development of economy and ecology in the Yellow River Basin, this paper selected panel data from 2010 to 2020, built an indicator system from five levels of growth quality, resources consumption, environmental governance, social life, and scientific research and innovation, used the entropy weight comprehensive index method to evaluate the green development level of the upper reaches of the Yellow River and its four provinces and regions, and analyzed the temporal characteristics and regional differences of the green development level. The results show that from the perspective of temporal variation, the green development level of the upper reaches of the Yellow River has increased steadily since 2010, and by 2020, the criteria level scores are social life, resources consumption, scientific research innovation, growth quality and environmental governance. From the perspective of regional differences, the green development level of the four provinces and regions in the upper reaches of the Yellow River shows a stable and positive trend from 2010 to 2020, but there is still room for improvement. Inner Mongolia scores the highest (0.538) and Qinghai scores the lowest (0.346). From the perspective of internal differences, the weakness of green development in Inner Mongolia is the high consumption of resources. The level of social life and resources consumption in Ningxia needs to be improved. The quality of growth in Gansu is not high. Qinghai needs to improve the level of social life, scientific research innovation and environmental governance. Therefore, the upper Yellow River region should strengthen the quality of growth and environmental governance, implement differentiated measures to improve the level of green development and promote green transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]