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Distance & area

Multi-stop route planner

Add up to 25 stops, let it find the fastest order, and see the distance and time of every leg. Then open it in Google Maps or Apple Maps.

Add a stop
or tap the map
Stops 6 of 25

Example Six sights in downtown Washington. Add a stop to start your own route.

Paste a list

One stop per line: an address, a place, or coordinates with a name (“Warehouse, 39.7392, -104.9903”).

Travel mode
End of the route

The start stays put; the other stops are sorted to take the least time.

Loading the map…

Routing: FOSSGIS OSRM and Valhalla · data © OpenStreetMap contributors Missing a road? Fix it on OpenStreetMap

6 stops · Back to the start

Total distance
10.3mi
Time · by car
30 min

Not counting the time spent at each stop. Times assume clear roads at each road’s normal speed: they don’t include traffic, lights or stops.

Legs

  1. 1 → 2 Union Station → U.S. Capitol 0.70 mi · 2 min
  2. 2 → 3 U.S. Capitol → Washington Monument 1.69 mi · 4 min
  3. 3 → 4 Washington Monument → Jefferson Memorial 1.32 mi · 3 min
  4. 4 → 5 Jefferson Memorial → Lincoln Memorial 2.87 mi · 9 min
  5. 5 → 6 Lincoln Memorial → White House 1.28 mi · 5 min
  6. 6 → 1 White House → Union Station 2.44 mi · 7 min

Take it with you

Google Maps
Apple Maps, leg by leg

Apple Maps links have one start and one end, so here is each leg.

Keep planning

More tools for planning trips.

Distance matrixThe distance between all your stops, in one table. Drive time mapHow far you can get from a point in a set time. Straight line vs driving distanceHow much longer the road is than a straight line.

Save or share the route

How to use it

  1. Add your stops

    Search by address, tap the map or paste a list with one stop per line. The first stop is where you start.

  2. Put them in order

    Choose how the route ends (back to the start, at the last stop, or wherever is best) and press “Sort by the fastest route”. You can also change the order with the arrows, or drag a stop on the map to move it.

  3. Take it with you

    Open it in Google Maps or Apple Maps, download it as GPX for your GPS or as CSV for a spreadsheet, or copy the link to send it.

What it’s for

  • Deliveries and service calls

    Put the day’s drop-offs or visits in order to drive fewer miles and finish earlier.

  • Road trips

    Chain towns, viewpoints or wineries in the order that takes the least time.

  • Errands

    The bank, the pharmacy, the grocery store and school pickup: see which order works best.

  • Bike rides and walking tours

    Plan a tour of a city and see how long it takes from one place to the next.

How it’s calculated

The route is calculated by OSRM, an open-source routing engine, on the OpenStreetMap road network, running on FOSSGIS’s public server. For each travel mode it uses the roads you can take and each road’s normal speed, with no traffic. By car it also takes ferries where there’s no other way (to an island, for example), and the crossing counts toward the distance and time.

To sort the stops it solves what’s known as the traveling salesman problem: it looks for the order that takes the least time. With fewer than 10 stops it tries every possible order; with more, it uses a fast method that gives a very good order, though not always the very best. The start never moves, and with “End at the last stop”, neither does the last one.

The time is the driving (or riding, or walking) time between stops: it doesn’t include the time you spend at each stop, so add that yourself.

Why the best order is hard to find

5 stops: 24 orders · 10 stops: 362,880

With the start fixed, the number of possible orders is the factorial of the remaining stops: 4! = 24 with 5 stops and 9! = 362,880 with 10. With 25 stops there are more orders than grains of sand on Earth, which is why, from 10 stops on, an approximate method is used.

Why Google Maps gets it in parts

A Google Maps link opens 11 points at most: the start, the end and 9 stops in between (and only 3 in between if it opens in a phone’s browser instead of the app). If your route has more, it’s split here into parts, each starting where the last one ends: open the first and, when you reach its last stop, open the next.

Apple Maps links have one start and one end, so the route opens leg by leg. To take the whole route to a GPS or an app like OsmAnd, download it as GPX.

Limits

Up to 25 stops per route. The routing service is free and public and asks for moderate use: one request per second at most. Addresses in a list are looked up one at a time, roughly one per second.

Frequently asked questions

How many stops can I add?

Up to 25. To open the route in Google Maps, if it has more than 11 points it’s split into parts, because Google doesn’t allow more in one link.

Does it really find the best order?

With fewer than 10 stops, yes: it tries every possible order. With more, it uses an approximate method that gives a very good order. If you know a shortcut, change the order by hand and compare the distance and time.

Can I keep the last stop fixed?

Yes: choose “End at the last stop” and that stop stays at the end. With “Back to the start” the route ends where it began, and with “End wherever is best” it ends at the stop that makes the route fastest.

Does it account for traffic or delivery windows?

No. It uses each road’s normal speed with no traffic, and it doesn’t count the time you spend at each stop or delivery time windows.

How do I get it onto my GPS or phone?

Open it in Google Maps or Apple Maps from your phone, or download it as GPX, with the whole route and the stops as waypoints, for a GPS unit or an app like OsmAnd.

Can I paste a list of addresses?

Yes, one per line, under “Paste a list”. Coordinates with a name in front also work (“Warehouse, 39.7392, -104.9903”). Addresses are looked up one at a time, and you’ll see which ones weren’t found.

Related tools

All tools
Distance between two points Measure the distance between any two places or points on the map, in miles or kilometers. Distance between cities Pick two US cities and get the distance between them, both in a straight line and by road. Distance between ZIP codes Enter two US ZIP codes to get the distance between them and see both areas on the map. Straight line vs driving distance Compare the as-the-crow-flies distance with the real driving distance and see how much the road adds.

Sources