How To Find The Fastest Route Around Multiple Stops

If you want to find the quickest route from one place to another, apps like Google Maps, Apple Maps and Waze are fantastic. But what if you need to make a lot of stops, and you want the fastest route that includes all of them? Maybe you’re delivering groceries, or driving around doing lawn maintenance, or even just have a lot of errands, and you want the most efficient route so it can all get done as quickly as possible. 

What you need is route optimization. Route optimization is the process of finding the best route around many stops. Depending on the situation, “best” might mean shortest, fastest, or least costly. It doesn’t sound all that hard — but in fact it’s a difficult mathematical puzzle, often called the traveling salesman problem, that nobody has ever cracked. 

So there’s no perfect solution. But there ARE a bunch of route planner apps and more complex route optimization software tools that use algorithms to find the shortest route. Here are a few quick options for when you just want to get the job done, fast – with and without help from the algorithms:

1. Google Maps
2. Apple Maps
3. SpeedyRoute
4. Mapquest
5. Routific

Let’s look at each of them in more detail.

Five easy ways to plan the fastest route for multiple stops

1. Google Maps

No routing algorithm. Up to 10 stops, free. 

Give the Google Maps route planner any two points and it will instantly plan a route for you, taking traffic into account and giving you an estimate of  travel time and distance. Fabulous! But when it comes to handling multiple stops, Google Maps just doesn’t have the functionality to give you an optimized route on its own. You’ll have to give it some help. 

Here’s how: If your route has 10 stops or fewer, just enter the first stop you want to visit, then click “Directions” to start adding more stops. (We have a whole article on how to use Google Maps to create a multiple-stop route if you want more detailed instructions). 

We added our stops in a fairly random order, and ended up with something like this: 

As you can see, that’s a messy route! But you can tidy it up by dragging and dropping your stops into an order that makes sense. I played about for a couple of minutes and ended up with this:

That’s a very inefficient 115km and 3 hours of driving, transformed into 40km and 1.5 hours of driving. Not bad for a few minute’s work. 

But what if you have more than 10 stops to visit? Google Maps can’t help you. 

There are some hacks (you can find them in our post about how to optimize routes with Google Maps), but they’re hard work. The route I found in the picture above was much better than the first version, and it’s ok — but it’s probably not the fastest route possible. And with every new stop added to the list, the task gets more difficult. By the time you get to around 20 stops, you’re at risk of spending more time fiddling with stop order than you might save with a more efficient route. 

That’s when you need a specialist multi-stop route planner app. In the next few sections, we’ll look at free tools like Mapquest and SpeedyRoute — and, of course, Routific. But first, let’s take a look at the Apple Maps app. 

2. Apple Maps

No routing algorithm. Up to 15 stops, free.

After recent iOS updates, some people are saying Apple Maps is finally catching up to Google Maps. But Apple Maps is new to the multi-stop route planning game, and even Google can’t really do it well. So I’m sorry to say that Apple Maps, based on our tests, is still not quite up to the job. Yes, you can add multiple stops and then drag and drop to sort them, and the experience is pretty good on an iPhone. Apple Maps even allows you to add more than 10 stops, which is a big step forward. On the desktop, though, the experience is still slow and clunky compared to Google Maps. 

So if you’re a big fan of Apple in general and you have simple route planning needs that can all be met with the mobile app — go ahead. (We have more detailed instructions in our article on using Apple Maps as a route planner). 

But if you’re going to be planning multi-stop routes on a regular basis, you’ll need more. Let’s take a look at three apps that are specifically designed for planning multi-stop routes. 

3. Speedyroute

Basic routing algorithm. Up to 10 stops free, then paid. 

When it comes to planning a route with a large number of stops, one of the biggest issues is how you add your stops. With 10 stops or less, it’s not too hard to type addresses or business names in, one by one. But that kind of manual entry starts to get very annoying, very fast, when you’re dealing with a lot of stops. That’s why route planners like Speedyroute offer the option to upload a list of stops you’re already created in Excel or Google Docs. You can either upload a spreadsheet directly, or cut and paste a list of addresses. That’s especially useful for businesses like delivery services, which can export lists of addresses from their order management or point of sale systems. 

After that, it’s simple: Tell Speedyroute where you’re starting and how many vehicles you’re using, click “Optimize route”, and their algorithm will do it for you. 

SpeedyRoute limitations

• You can only optimize up to 10 stops (including your starting point) for free. After that, you’ll have to sign up for an account at $69 per month. 
• You can’t share a route created with Speedyroute to a mobile app, or send via email. You can only print it, or export to a spreadsheet. 

4. Mapquest

Basic routing algorithm. Up to 26 stops free, ad-supported.

Like Speedyroute, Mapquest allows you to upload a spreadsheet, or copy and paste a list of stops – up to 26 in total. Then all you need to do is check the box labeled “Let us re-order stops”, and your route will be optimized. 

Mapquest also allows you to print your route, or share it via a short-link URL, which you can email or send in a text message. There is a “Send to mobile” option, but in several tries over a few months I’ve never had this work properly. I guess that’s the deal when you’re using a free service!

So you can use Mapquest to optimize a route, but you won’t get turn-by-turn directions, real-time traffic updates, or anything else you’ve probably come to expect from navigation apps like Google Maps and Waze. If you really have zero budget and MUST use a free route planner, your best option is probably to print/email the optimized stop list created in Mapquest, then just add the stops to your favorite app on your mobile device to get actual driving directions.  

This is all a bit strange, because Mapquest actually has its own mobile app, which functions exactly like the desktop version AND includes turn-by-turn navigation – but there’s no link between the desktop and mobile versions.

Mapquest limitations 

• Mapquest is supported by ads, which keeps it free — but you may find the ads intrusive.
• There’s no option to upgrade so that you can route more than 26 stops.
• You can’t share a Mapquest route directly to a mobile device. 

5. Routific 

Intelligent routing algorithm, unlimited stops with 7-day free trial, then paid. 

At Routific route optimization is what we’re all about. Many of our customers are delivery businesses, so we have a bunch of delivery management features as well, but fundamentally finding the most efficient, fastest route around multiple stops is our thing. The most efficient order of stops is usually the fastest, but we also take into account things like driver shifts, vehicle types, and whether the route actually makes sense to a human driver.

We also have a driver app for both Android and iPhone, so once a route has been optimized it’s easy to send to a mobile phone. Once the app is open, drivers can use their choice of Google Maps, Apple Maps or Waze for actual driving directions. 

We also don’t put a limit on the number of stops you can optimize, even in our free trial version. So yes, you’ll need to sign up with an email address (no credit card) — but during your 7-day trial you can plan routes with hundreds of stops if you like. 

Routific limitations

• After the 7-day trial period, it’s not free. If you still need multi-stop route planning functionality after that, you’ll need to upgrade — our pricing starts at $49 a month.  
• Our focus on delivery routes means that we don’t have all the features some other kinds of business might need. For example, if you’re mostly making sales or service calls, you probably want some kind of integration with a customer management system. 

If you ARE looking for route planning software with delivery management features, then you should definitely check us out! Features like time windows, automated customer notifications, a dispatcher view with real-time updates, and proof of delivery all come standard. We pay a lot of attention to delivery driver happiness as well.

Sign up for a 7-day free trial of Routific route planner here.

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