Multi-stop route planner
Add the places you want to visit and let the planner put them in a short, untangled order. Then send them to Google Maps for directions or drop them into your itinerary.
How route optimisation works
Planning a route with multiple stops
Put your fixed points in first: where you start, and where you must end if it is a one-way trip. Add the rest in any order. The optimiser keeps stop 1 in place and reorders the others.
A shorter route is not always a better day. If one stop only works in the morning, or a ferry runs at set times, move it by hand after optimising. The up and down arrows let you override any position.
For road trips, split the ordered list into days of manageable driving; the road trip planning guide has a calculator for that, and the road trip cost calculator turns the distance into fuel money.
Questions
How does the multi-stop route optimiser work?
It measures the straight-line distance between every pair of stops, builds a route by always going to the nearest unvisited stop, then repeatedly reverses sections of the route wherever that removes a crossing and shortens it (the 2-opt method).
Is it the shortest possible route?
For a handful of stops it usually is, or is within a few percent. Finding the guaranteed shortest route is the classic travelling salesman problem, which gets slow very fast as stops increase, so planners use heuristics like this one.
Why straight-line distances instead of roads?
Road routing needs a routing server; free public ones are not meant for heavy use by websites. Straight-line distance orders stops well in most regions. For driving times, open the ordered stops in Google Maps with one tap.
How many stops can I add?
Up to 25. Stops are saved in your browser so you can come back to them.
Can I fix where the route ends?
Yes. Tick "Keep last stop as the end" for a one-way trip to a set destination, or "Return to start" for a round trip.