Google Maps stop limit: how to plan more than 9 stops

How many stops can Google Maps actually handle?

Google Maps' directions tool takes up to 9 stops on a computer, and that count includes the final destination — so it's really a starting point, up to 7 stops in between, and the end of the trip. A link you share follows a different rule: a Google Maps URL supports at most 9 waypoints between the start and the end, and only 3 when the link is opened in a mobile browser. Add a 10th stop and Maps has nowhere to put it — you leave one out, start a second route, or reach for something built for longer lists.

For a Saturday of errands, 9 stops is plenty. For a delivery day it runs out fast. Fifteen stops is a short day for a lot of small delivery businesses, and a Local Food Marketplace write-up on farms setting up their own home delivery describes rural routes running 30 to 50 stops across a full 8-hour shift. None of that fits in one Google Maps route, and the workarounds below only get you so far before the day needs a real plan.

Does Google Maps put your stops in the best order?

No. Google Maps drives stops in the order you enter or paste them, whether you typed them one at a time or pasted a list out of a spreadsheet or an order email. You can drag a stop to a new position in the list — reordering by hand is built in — but working out which order is actually fastest is left to you. On a four-stop errand run that's one or two drags. On a fifteen-stop delivery route it's guesswork, and a guess that leaves the wrong stop for last can cost real drive time, every single day you run it.

How to split a route into parts Google Maps can take

Until the stop count fits under 9, the usual workaround is to split the day into parts by hand before you ever open Maps.

1. 1

   Group stops by area, not by order number

   Sort your list roughly by neighborhood or road rather than customer name or the order it came in. Maps will drive whatever order you hand it, so a list already grouped by geography is most of the real work.

2. 2

   Cap each group at 9, destination included

   A 22-stop day becomes three groups of around 7 or 8, leaving a little slack for the stop you inevitably forgot to place.

3. 3

   Build each group as its own route or link

   Start the next group from wherever the last one ended if the driver isn't returning to base in between, so the miles connect instead of doubling back.

4. 4

   Hand the driver the parts in the order to run them

   A texted list of links works for one driver covering the whole day; with more than one van, keep each group's link with the driver running it, labeled by sequence.

Where splitting by hand breaks down

This holds up fine for an occasional long list. It stops being worth the time once the day gets busy or complicated in any of a few familiar ways:

• You're rebuilding the same three or four Maps links by hand, every single delivery day.
• A frozen or refrigerated box needs to ride on a specific vehicle, and Maps has no idea that rule exists.
• A customer was promised a delivery window, and a group running long means someone misses it.
• More than one driver is out, and splitting by area alone leaves one route short and another overloaded.

At that point, using Maps for free isn't actually saving time — it's spending the morning re-deriving, stop by stop, what a route planner already works out in a few seconds.

A free tool that works out the order and hands it to Google Maps

The free multi-stop route planner takes up to 25 stops, works out the shortest driving order for one vehicle, and shows the miles and time that saves against the order you typed in — with no account needed. Once the order is set, it opens the route in Google Maps for you, already broken into parts of up to 9 stops in the right sequence: the same grouping covered in the steps above, done for you and ordered by drive time rather than area alone.

When the same stops repeat every delivery day

A free planner is enough for a one-off list. A business running the same territory every week has a different problem: several vehicles that can't all carry the same things, delivery windows customers were promised, and drivers who need the route on their phone rather than a stack of Maps links to open in order, one after another, at the start of every shift. Porch Routes's optimizer plans every vehicle together in one build — up to 1,000 orders at a time — fits delivery windows and what each vehicle can carry by weight and temperature, and sends each driver a link to their own route with nothing to install. How to plan delivery routes for a farm or CSA walks through the rest of that setup, from choosing delivery days to what belongs on which van.