Free tool
Optimize a route with as many stops as you have.
Paste your stops, get the order that drives shortest, and open it in Google Maps. Google caps a map link at nine waypoints — this splits a long route into chained legs, so that cap stops being a wall.
One address per line. The first line is where you start.
How it works
Paste your stops, one address per line. The first line is your depot or start point.
We ask Google for the order that drives shortest across all of them, not the order you typed.
Open the result in Google Maps. If it runs past nine waypoints, it comes back as legs that chain together.
Why most free planners stop at ten
A Google Maps link carries at most nine waypoints between a start and a finish. That is the limit nearly every free planner inherits, and it is why a twenty-stop day will not open as one map.
Splitting the route into chained legs is the way around it: each leg begins at the stop the previous one ended on, so the driver follows one continuous order across two or three maps.
Questions about route optimization
- What is route optimization?
- Route optimization is working out the order to visit a set of stops so the total driving is as short as possible. With a handful of stops a dispatcher can do it by eye. Past about eight the number of possible orders grows faster than anyone can check, which is where software earns its place.
- How does route optimization work?
- The tool measures the real driving distance between every pair of stops, then searches for the order with the lowest total. It is the travelling salesman problem, and for the sizes a delivery route runs to, a good solver returns a near-optimal answer in under a second.
- How many stops can Google Maps handle?
- Nine waypoints between your start and your destination, in a map link. Beyond that the link will not open. This tool splits a longer route into chained legs instead, so a twenty-five stop day is still one continuous order.
- Is this route planner really free?
- Yes, with no account and no trial. It is made by High Point GPS, a fleet tracking company, because the fleets we work with plan routes every morning. Nothing is stored — the addresses you paste are used for the one request and not kept.
- What does a real dispatch system add over this?
- Time windows, vehicle capacity, driver shifts, live traffic, and sending the route to the driver rather than to a browser tab. A free tool orders stops; a dispatch system runs the day and records what happened on it, which is what proves a delivery later.