How to find the fastest route with multiple stops

Last updated: September 12, 2026

With one destination, every map app finds the fastest route for you. With five, none of them do: they'll drive your stops in the order you typed them, however roundabout that is. Finding the fastest route with multiple stops means finding the fastest order — and that's the part the apps leave to you.

Why Google Maps won't sort your stops

Google Maps allows up to 10 stops per route and navigates them in exactly the sequence you entered. Drag them around by hand and it recalculates, but it never suggests a better order itself. Picking the fastest sequence is a hard problem — the classic traveling salesman problem — and Google Maps is built for navigation, not for solving it. (Details on the limit and its workarounds: how to add more than 10 stops to Google Maps.)

Fastest is not the same as shortest

The route with the fewest miles is often not the quickest one. Two miles saved by cutting through downtown can cost fifteen minutes at traffic lights; a slightly longer loop that stays on the highway wins. So “fastest” has to be measured in driving time, with real roads and real speeds — not with a ruler on the map. Any method that only compares distances will hand you a route that looks efficient and drives slowly.

Get the fastest order in three steps

SortStops is a free tool that sorts your stops by driving time, using Google's own routing engine, then opens the finished route in Google Maps:

1. Add up to 25 stops. Type them with suggestions, or paste a list — one place per line.
2. Pick one-way or round trip. Your first stop is the starting point; a round trip loops back to it, a one-way trip ends at your last stop.
3. Sort, and open in Google Maps. You get the total drive time, each leg's time and distance, and turn-by-turn navigation from Google Maps.

Try the free route planner — no account, nothing to install, and the sort takes a few seconds.

Where the start and end matter

The fastest route depends on where it begins and ends, so tell the planner rather than letting it guess. Your first stop is always the start. If the day ends somewhere other than where it began — a hotel, the office, a friend's place — choose one-way and put that place last; the planner sorts everything in between. If you're heading home again, round trip closes the loop for you.

When to trust the map and when to trust the tool

Three stops in a line? Trust your eyes. Six or more spread across town — or across a state — and the number of possible orders runs into the hundreds, with driving times that don't match how close the pins look. That's when a sort earns its keep. For a day of around-town stops, see the errand route planner guide; for a longer trip, the road trip planner with multiple stops.