If you or your drivers plan the day’s stops by staring at a map and guessing, you’re probably adding miles, fuel, and late arrivals you don’t need. Route planning software sorts the stops into an efficient order for you.
You don’t need to understand the math behind it. You need to know which tool fits your size.
One Driver, Under 10 Stops: Google Maps (Free)
Google Maps lets you add up to 9 stops, including your final destination. The catch is that it doesn’t reorder them for you. You drag the stops into the order you think is best.
If you run one van with a handful of stops a day, that’s usually fine. You know your area better than any app.
A Few Drivers or Dozens of Stops: Routific
Once you’re juggling more stops than you can sort in your head, route optimization starts paying for itself. Most of these tools run on optimization math rather than artificial intelligence (AI) in the chatbot sense, and that’s fine. What matters is that they work out an efficient order for every stop across all your drivers.
Routific‘s pricing is based on orders, not drivers:
- Up to 100 orders a month: free
- 101 to 1,000 orders a month: a flat $150 a month
- Unlimited drivers on every plan, plus a driver app, real-time tracking, customer email notifications, and proof of delivery
That free tier is a real way to test it on your actual routes before you pay anything.
Paying Per Driver: OptimoRoute
OptimoRoute charges per driver instead. The Lite plan is $35.10 per driver per month billed yearly, with a driver app and route history. Pro, at $44.10 per driver per month billed yearly, adds analytics, proof of delivery, and customer feedback. There’s a 30-day free trial.
Quick math: with two drivers, OptimoRoute Lite is about $70 a month. With lots of orders and only a couple of drivers, OptimoRoute can be the cheaper pick. With many drivers and fewer orders, Routific often wins. Plug in your own numbers.
Probably Too Big for You: Onfleet
Onfleet shows up in a lot of roundups. Its entry plan, Launch, starts at $619 a month for 2,500 tasks. That’s built for established delivery operations, not a bakery with two vans.
When This Isn’t Worth It
If you run the same route every week, like a standing list of commercial customers, plan it once and save it. Software helps most when the stops change every day.
And if you have one driver and under 10 stops, stick with Google Maps. Paying $35 a month to shave a few minutes off a short route rarely makes sense.
Your Next Step
Pull last Tuesday’s delivery list. If it was under 100 orders for the month, load it into Routific’s free tier and compare its route to what your driver actually drove. If the miles drop noticeably, you have your answer.
Prices checked on vendor websites on October 8, 2026.