MapQuest route planner and multiple stops
Most free map apps refuse to touch the order of your stops. MapQuest is the exception: its route planner has a checkbox that resequences the middle of your route. That makes it worth a serious look, and worth knowing where it runs out.
Short answer
MapQuest's route planner takes a long list of addresses and, unlike Google Maps, Apple Maps or Waze, it will reorder them for you. There is a checkbox that asks MapQuest to re-order the stops, and you choose whether it optimizes for shortest time or shortest distance.
Stops are labeled A, B, C and so on, which puts the ceiling at 26 addresses in one route. First and last stop stay where you put them; only the middle gets rearranged.
How to build a multi stop route on MapQuest
The reordering happens on the server when you ask for directions, so nothing changes on screen until you press the button. If the new order looks wrong, untick the box and the route reverts to the sequence you typed.
The option that actually matters
Everything else about MapQuest is ordinary. The re-order option is not, because it is the only free, mainstream, no signup way to get a computed stop order out of a map website.
Two things are worth understanding about how it behaves:
- Your first and last stops are fixed. That is usually what you want: you start from the depot and finish at home, and only the jobs in between should move.
- Shortest time and shortest distance give different answers. Distance is the stable one. Time depends on traffic assumptions, and on a long list those assumptions carry a lot of weight.
What reordering is worth
Seven addresses entered in the order the jobs came in run 69 miles. The same seven in a computed order run 39 miles, 44 percent shorter.
That is the size of the prize, and it is why the checkbox matters more than any other feature on the page. It is also why the apps that lack it cost you real money on a busy day, however good their traffic data is.
The 26 stop ceiling
The A to Z labeling is the practical limit: 26 addresses per route. That is well beyond Google Maps at ten and Apple Maps at fifteen, and it covers a great many real working days.
If you want to know exactly where your own limit sits today, it takes about a minute to find out: paste addresses in one at a time until the Add Stop control stops accepting them. Worth doing rather than trusting a number from a blog, including this one, since web tools change without announcements.
Where MapQuest is genuinely the best free option
Be fair to it. Choose MapQuest when:
- you have somewhere between ten and twenty five stops;
- you want the order computed without creating an account;
- you are working on a desktop and printing or reading the turn list;
- you are in the United States or Canada, where its coverage is strongest.
What it still does not do
The route planner is a web page, and that shapes its limits:
- No bulk paste. Addresses go in one field at a time, which on twenty stops is its own small chore.
- The ceiling is real. Past 26 addresses you are splitting the day, and a split day is never planned as one.
- Nothing to hand to a driver. The plan lives in your browser tab.
- No sense of a bad address. One stop typed wrong lands somewhere plausible and quietly stretches the route.
When you outgrow it
The moment that usually decides it is the first day with more than twenty five jobs, or the first time the addresses arrive as a spreadsheet column and typing them one by one stops being reasonable.
FAQ
Does MapQuest optimize the route order?
Yes. Tick the option that lets MapQuest re-order your stops and choose shortest time or shortest distance. It is the main thing that sets it apart from other free map services.
How many stops does MapQuest allow?
Stops are labeled A through Z, which caps a route at 26 addresses. Check your own limit by adding stops until the control stops responding.
Does MapQuest move my first and last stop?
No. Optimization rearranges the stops in between and leaves your start and your final destination where you put them.
Is MapQuest free?
The route planner is free to use and does not require an account. MapQuest also sells developer APIs, which is a different product.
MapQuest or Google Maps for multiple stops?
MapQuest if the order matters, because Google Maps will not reorder anything. Google Maps if you want live traffic and the route on your phone.
Can I import a list of addresses into MapQuest?
Not into the consumer route planner. Addresses are entered one field at a time, which is the practical limit on how long a list you will actually build there.