Multi-Stop Route Planner
Add up to 30 stops, reorder them, and get a full road route with per-leg breakdown and total distance and time.
By Aryan Khan, Founder & Editor · Updated October 2026
For example, a nine-stop delivery round returns nine legs and a total — the day's skeleton, measurable before the van leaves the yard.
How to use Multi-Stop Route Planner
A round is legs plus a total. See both before you drive either:
The Multi-Stop Route Planner routes a journey through up to 30 stops in your order, along real roads, and breaks it into legs with total distance and time. Add the stops, reorder them freely, and read the round as a whole before committing the day to it.
- 1Add stops.
- 2Calculate the route.
- 3Review total distance and time.
What people use Multi-Stop Route Planner for
1. Delivery and service rounds
The round's total is the shift's truth. If the order matters — and it usually does — the Route Optimizer trials better orders of the same stops.
2. Estate-agent and viewing days
Six viewings across a county become one routed day with leg times — the schedule clients can actually be given.
3. Errand chains
School, depot, shop, home: the chain routed once is shorter than the chain improvised four times.
4. Road trips with stops
The scenic detours are stops too. Route them in and the trip's real distance replaces the fantasy figure — costs follow from the Road Trip Cost Calculator.
Worked examples
Each leg is reported with its own distance and time, so the day's pinch points show themselves: the 40-minute leg between stops 6 and 7 is where the schedule will break, visible at breakfast.
The same stops in a thoughtless order can add a quarter to the round. This planner prices the order you give it; the Optimizer exists to beat it.
What the planner reports
The output, field by field — what to check before the day is committed.
| Output | What it tells you | Decide from it |
|---|---|---|
| Per-leg distance | Each hop's road miles | Where the day stretches |
| Per-leg time | Routing estimate per hop | Appointment spacing |
| Total distance | The round's full length | Fuel and cost |
| Total time | Driving time summed | Shift feasibility |
| Stop order | Your sequence, routed | Whether to optimise |
Times are routing estimates without live traffic — pad the legs that end in appointments.
A multi-stop route is useful for planning, but stop order and traffic assumptions determine whether it is efficient
Routing several stops along the road network gives a practical total distance and leg-by-leg travel estimate. It is useful for errands, field work, deliveries and comparing alternative stop sequences.
A route that follows the entered order is not automatically the globally optimal route. Live traffic, time windows, vehicle restrictions, service time at each stop and road closures can change the best real-world plan.
How to interpret the result
The most common errors come from using a correct result to answer the wrong geographic question. Keep these points in mind for Multi-Stop Route Planner:
- Place route endpoints on roads, not rooftops. Routing engines snap points to the nearest drivable way, and a point in a river or a courtyard can snap somewhere surprising — nudging the pin to the nearest street makes results stable and explainable.
- When optimising many stops, keep the true origin first and let the engine order the rest; then sanity-check the result visually. Optimizers minimise distance, not your time windows — hard appointments still belong in manual order.
Limits & appropriate use
Routing's limits live in three places: data vintage, access reality and time modelling. The network is OpenStreetMap's current picture — new interchanges lag, private gates may be missing, seasonal ferries keep their own calendars. Access rules reflect mapped law, not today's roadworks. And durations are free-flow physics: speed limits and road classes without your city's sociology, so peak hours, weather and parking belong in your buffer, not in the engine's promise. The tools label all three limits on every result, because an unlabelled estimate is a trap.
What the stack does brilliantly is the reproducible core: the same stops, mode and engine give the same route to everyone, everywhere, which makes it a superb baseline for comparison, screening and planning. Escalation is domain-specific and well understood — professional dispatch adds live traffic and driver hours; logistics tenders add contracted networks; navigation products add certified maps. A free browser tool that hands you a clean, exportable baseline with its assumptions printed is not competing with those; it is feeding them.
- Live congestion and ETAs → traffic-aware commercial routing.
- Driver-hours and windows → transport-management systems.
- Certified navigation → licensed map products with update guarantees.
Data & methodology
The routing workspace sends the selected stop order and travel mode to Valhalla, with OSRM driving fallback where available; the route depends on current provider data.
For source details, licences and model limitations, see Data Sources and Methodology.
Key terms worth knowing
- Isochrone
- The reachable-area polygon for a given travel time from a start point.
- Costing model
- The routing engine's mode profile (auto, pedestrian, bicycle) with its speeds and rules.
Editorial guidance: MapBench explains the method and limitations so the tool can be used as a transparent reference, not as a black-box answer. For legal boundaries, safety-critical routing, surveying, engineering, regulated decisions or official statistics, verify the result with the responsible authority or a qualified professional.
Category: Routing & Travel Time. Results are intended for everyday analysis and planning unless a page explicitly states otherwise.
Method, assumptions & limits
- This tool’s method
- The routing workspace sends the selected stop order and travel mode to Valhalla, with OSRM driving fallback where available; the route depends on current provider data.
- Before relying on the answer
- Check the stop order, travel mode and whether the result is a network route or a simplified estimate. Repeat the calculation after changing any of these inputs.
- What the result cannot establish
- Road access, congestion and closures can change. An estimated duration is not a live arrival-time commitment.
Coverage: Worldwide. Search, basemap and external data requests may use third-party services; browser-based does not mean every operation is offline. Read the source and licence notes, calculation methodology and privacy policy. If a result looks inconsistent, report a correction with the inputs and mode used.
Frequently asked questions
Clear answers about the calculation, accuracy and appropriate use.
Optimize order?
Manual ordering; use for planned stops.
Does the route include live traffic?
Unless the tool explicitly says otherwise, travel times are planning estimates and should not be treated as live-traffic predictions.
Why is road distance longer than straight-line distance?
Roads must follow the available network, terrain, bridges and restrictions, while straight-line distance measures the geometric minimum between two points.
Can route results change over time?
Yes. Road-network data, access restrictions and routing datasets can change, so recheck important journeys close to travel time.
Does it optimise the order?
This planner routes the order you give it, faithfully. Reordering to cut distance is the Route Optimizer's job — the two are designed to be used in sequence.
Why is road distance longer than straight-line?
Legs follow roads between stops. The total is the driven round, not the geometry of the dots.
How many stops can I add?
Up to 30 — enough for a full delivery round or a very ambitious Saturday.
Can the route start and end at the same place?
Yes — add the depot as both first and last stop and the round closes on itself.
Can I export the route?
The roadbook and GPX tools elsewhere on the site cover documents and devices; this page's craft is the routed round itself.
Can a stop appear twice?
Yes — a hub visited morning and evening is two stops. The leg table treats each visit as its own row, which is the day's truth.
What if two stops share an address?
Keep both if the visits are genuinely separate; delete one if it was a typing echo. The planner routes what it is given.
Related tools and resources
Better orders come from the Route Optimizer; documents from the Route Roadbook Generator; and costs from the Road Trip Cost Calculator.
More free tools
Sources, methodology & editorial trust
- ✓ Browser-first processing where supported
- ✓ External sources are documented
- ✓ No account required for public tools
- ✓ Review data sources
Calculations are documented with their assumptions, limitations and source context rather than presented as unexplained answers.
Reviewed and maintained by Aryan Khan, Founder & Editor of MapBench.
Part of our routes & travel time hub
Multi-Stop Route Planner sits in the routes & travel time cluster, alongside 62 other tools that answer neighbouring questions with different methods or datasets.
You may also need
When this answer is only part of the job, these clusters cover the next step.
Read the guide behind this tool
Planning a Road Trip With Nothing but Free Map Tools — A complete weekend-warrior workflow: stops, optimized order, fuel budget, drive-time sanity checks and a GPX file for the car — all without a single paid app.