Errand route planner: run the whole day in one loop

Last updated: September 12, 2026

Pharmacy, hardware store, a return at the mall, groceries last so the ice cream survives. A Saturday of errands is a route-planning problem in disguise — and most of us solve it by driving to whatever we remember next, then crossing town twice for the thing we forgot.

Why errand days sprawl

Errands are spread around town, not along a road. That's what makes them different from a road trip: there's no natural direction of travel, so “nearest place next” sends you zig-zagging. Six stops can be run in 720 different orders, and the gap between a good one and a bad one is easily an hour of driving and a lot of parking. Add school pickup or an appointment with a fixed time and it gets harder still.

Sort the errands, then drive them

SortStops is a free errand route planner: paste your list, get the fastest loop, and hand it to Google Maps for the driving.

Add your stops — type them with suggestions, or paste the whole list from your notes app, one place per line. Up to 25 stops.
Choose round trip. Your first stop is home; the loop brings you back to it. Pick one-way instead if the day ends somewhere else, like the office.
Sort, then open in Google Maps. The order is optimized on real driving times, and Google Maps does turn-by-turn from there.

Try the free route planner — no account, no app to install, about a minute from list to loop.

Fixed-time stops and cold groceries

An optimizer sorts for the least driving; it doesn't know your dentist is at 2:00 or that the frozen food should be last. The easy fix is to plan around the fixed points:

Make the appointment your start or end stop. Everything else sorts around it, and one-way mode ends the loop wherever you need to be.
If a stop must be last — groceries, ice cream, the thing that melts — make it the final stop of a one-way route from home, then drive home from there.
Split a long day at the fixed appointment: one loop before, one after. Both stay well under the 25-stop limit.

Do you really need a tool for six stops?

For three, no — look at a map and go. Past five or six, eyeballing it stops working, because “close on the map” and “quick to drive to” drift apart once one-way streets, left turns across traffic, and the highway on-ramp on the wrong side of town get involved. Sorting takes less time than debating it in the driveway. If you want the reasoning, see the best order to visit multiple addresses.

What this isn't

SortStops isn't a delivery-fleet dispatcher — no driver assignments, no proof of delivery, no time windows. It sorts a person's list of places into the fastest order and gets out of the way. For a weekend of errands, that's the whole job.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a free errand route planner?

Yes. SortStops is free with no account or app: paste your errands one per line (up to 25), choose round trip so the loop ends back at home, sort, and open the route in Google Maps for navigation.

How do I plan errands around a fixed appointment?

Make the appointment your start or end stop and let everything else sort around it. If a stop must come last, like groceries, choose one-way and put it at the end. For a long day, split it into one loop before the appointment and one after.

Can Google Maps plan an errand route for me?

Google Maps navigates up to 10 stops in exactly the order you typed them and never suggests a faster order. Sorting the list first, then opening it in Google Maps, gives you the loop and the turn-by-turn directions.