The study of carbon budget and carbon compensation zoning is of great significance in formulating strategies to adapt to the low-carbon development of each region, promoting synergistic management of regional ecological environment, and realizing high-quality develop‐ ment. This paper takes 56 municipal units in the Yellow River Basin as the study area, and by constructing a conceptual structure of carbon income and expenditure as well as carbon compensation zoning of the cities in the basin, it studies the spatio-temporal differentiation law of carbon income and expenditure as well as carbon compensation zoning of the urban agglomerations in the Yellow River Basin by using methods such as the centralization index and the location-con‐ strained multivariate spatial clustering, and then it provides constructive theoretical solutions for the low-carbon development strategy in the process of urbanization. The study shows that: (1) the cities in the Yellow River Basin from 2000 to 2020 are characterized by obvious geographical differentiation of carbon expenditure and revenue, specifically, the carbon expenditure and revenue centralization index of the study area fluctuates up and down around the warning line of 0. 4, and the overall curve shows an obvious fluctuating upward trend. (2) The spatial and temporal variation of carbon income and expenditure among cities in the Yellow River Basin is remarkable, and the data show that carbon emissions in the Yellow River Basin show a structure of "low in the west and high in the east and central parts of the country", with the high-value centres in Gansu, Shaanxi and Shandong provinces in 2000, and then the number of high-value areas of carbon emissions has increased year by year, while at the same time, the absorptive capacity of carbon sinks in each city is roughly equal. (3) Based on the framework of carbon offset zoning, the study area is divided into five types of carbon offset spatial optimization zones, and suggestions are made for green and low-carbon development planning in different types of zones. (4) In the future, the study will refine the spatial scale of the study area, explore the balance of carbon budget and carbon compensation of smaller units, and strive to explore the optimization of the green and low-carbon development mode of small areas, so that the energy conservation and emission reduction and green development of small areas can lead the cities in the region to achieve the dual-carbon goal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]