Route Planner
Plan a driving route between any two places and see the real road distance, estimated driving time and the exact path drawn on an interactive map. Enter place names like “Paris, France” or raw coordinates like “48.85, 2.35” — the tool handles both.
Road routing is powered by the free OSRM public demo server, which computes routes on OpenStreetMap road data — the figures you see are real driving distances, not estimates. If the OSRM server is temporarily unreachable, the tool says so plainly and shows the straight-line (great-circle) distance instead, clearly labelled as an estimate rather than a road distance.
How to use this tool
Type a place name or a “latitude, longitude” pair for each end of the trip.
Place names are looked up once via the Nominatim geocoder; coordinates are used directly.
See the road distance, estimated driving time and the route on the map — a blue line means a real OSRM road route.
What people use this tool for
Check the true driving distance and time between Paris and Lyon before booking hotels.
Compare routes between the old flat and the new one to estimate fuel costs for moving day.
Get a quick, honest driving distance between two client sites when building a day's schedule.
How it's calculated
Place names are resolved to coordinates with the Nominatim geocoder (one lookup per user click, spaced to respect its 1 request/second fair-use policy); coordinate pairs are parsed directly with the site's parseLatLng helper. The road route is fetched from the OSRM public demo server (driving profile, full-geometry GeoJSON), which returns distance in metres and duration in seconds computed on OpenStreetMap road data; driving time uses OSRM's traffic-free speed profiles. If OSRM fails, the tool falls back to the Haversine great-circle distance, clearly labelled as a straight-line estimate.
Related tools and resources
Frequently asked questions
Is the distance shown the real driving distance?
Yes, when the route succeeds: the blue line and the figures come from the OSRM routing engine on real OpenStreetMap road data. If OSRM is unreachable the tool says so and shows a clearly-labelled straight-line estimate instead.
Does the driving time include traffic?
No. The OSRM demo server uses traffic-free speed profiles, so busy-hour trips will take longer. Treat the time as a best-case planning figure.
Can I enter coordinates instead of a place name?
Yes — any “latitude, longitude” pair (e.g. 48.8584, 2.2945) works, which is useful for rural addresses that geocode poorly.
Is there a limit on how far apart the points can be?
No built-in limit — cross-country and cross-continent routes work. Very long routes just take the OSRM server a little longer to compute.
Data sources & methodology
- OSRM — Open-source routing engine; road routes come from its public demo server.
- OpenStreetMap — The road network data OSRM routes on, and the map tiles.
- Nominatim — OpenStreetMap-based geocoder used to locate place names users type in.