Travel times, traffic and price

Good routes need good travel times. This page explains where they come from, what the traffic option adds, and why the price depends on the size of the plan.

Road network (standard)

Distances and drive times come from a road-network routing service (Google Maps Platform), with free-flow speeds: no traffic. For small plans every pair of places is measured. For larger plans each place is measured to its nearest neighbours and to the depot, the other pairs are estimated from the measured roads, and every estimated leg that the final routes actually drive is measured and the plan re-optimized with it. A plan whose routes still use an estimated leg says so.

Typical traffic

With the traffic option, drive times are those of a typical day at the plan's departure time (the earliest shift start, in your company's time zone), rush hours included. Set the day the routes run if it is not today. Arrival times are more realistic in cities and at peak hours; routes can change to avoid slow roads. It costs more, because traffic-aware travel times cost more to compute. It is a typical-day average for the departure time, not live traffic during the day.

Price of a plan

Without a subscription, each plan is priced from its size (stops and distinct locations) and the option chosen, and you see the price before paying. A plan that fails or is cancelled is refunded automatically. Examples:

One plan handles up to 300 distinct locations (depot, stops, pickups and vehicle start or end points) and 30 vehicles. Larger days can be split by zone or depot. Current prices are on the pricing page; POST /v1/optimizations/quote and the MCP tool quote_optimization return the exact price of a plan.