Free Open-Source vs Commercial Route Optimization Software: What You Get

Open-source route optimization software gives you a capable solver at no licence cost, and the open-source routing world is mature. Road-network engines built on OpenStreetMap data compute drive times and turn-by-turn routes between any two points. Vehicle routing solvers built on top of them take a set of stops, vehicles and constraints and return optimized routes, and general-purpose optimization libraries let a developer model almost any rule a fleet can describe. Real logistics companies run these solvers in production, and a developer can optimize a forty-stop problem on a laptop in an afternoon.

You build everything around the solver. Someone has to download the map data, keep it current and host it, and the engine needs a server that someone maintains. Historical and live traffic are not in the free data, so drive times are averages. You get no dispatcher screen and no driver app that shows the next stop and captures proof of delivery. Customer notifications and a live view of where the vans are also fall to you. When a truck breaks down, nothing re-sequences the afternoon, because the solver does not know where the trucks are. Each piece is a project, and the fleet becomes a software company with a routing product to maintain and a developer it cannot lose.

Building on open source is the right call for a fleet with an engineering team and an unusual problem, such as a rule no product supports or a scale where per-vehicle licensing hurts. For a fleet without developers on staff, the first year of development can easily cost more than the licence money it saves.

A commercial routing product, especially one on the High Point GPS add-on library, arrives with the pieces you would otherwise build: maintained maps with traffic, a planning screen for the dispatcher, a driver app with proof of delivery, and customer ETAs. The piece that matters most is the live connection to the vehicles. The optimizer knows where every van is and how long stops take, based on geofence data, so it can replan in the middle of the day. You pay per vehicle per month and the vendor keeps it running. Your developer, if you have one, works on order-system integrations instead of routing.

Some fleets run both. They use an add-on library routing tool for daily dispatch and an open-source solver for strategic questions like territory design, depot location and fleet sizing, which an analyst runs a few times a year instead of a dispatcher every morning. The same telematics data feeds both. High Point GPS integrates commercial routing tools with the High Point GPS platform and builds custom add-ins for fleets whose routing needs fall outside what the products offer.

The parts of a working routing system, and where each one comes from under the two approaches.