MakeRoutes is built by an independent developer in Spain. No investors, no growth team, no ad department — a tool that exists because its maker needed it, kept free because the everyday version of this problem should not cost money.
MakeRoutes exists to do the one thing Google Maps will not: work out the best order to visit several stops, instead of driving them in the order you typed them. It started with an ordinary annoyance — several errands in one trip, and Google Maps insisting on that typed order. Reordering ten stops by hand, watching the total time, trying another arrangement is a computer's job, so the computer got the job.
Handing the finished route back to Google Maps — or to Apple Maps, which since iOS 18.4 receives every stop — rather than navigating itself, is deliberate. MakeRoutes does not try to replace your navigation app; it does the one step your navigation app refuses to do, then gets out of the way.
MakeRoutes is not fleet software. There is no proof of delivery, no driver management, and routes cap at 11 stops — 8 in the browser. If your work needs those things, the honest comparison names the tools that do them well.
A weekend away with friends usually has two awkward parts. The first is the drive: collecting everyone from different addresses, in an order that does not zigzag across town — that is the job MakeRoutes does. The second waits at the holiday rental: who gets the big bedroom, and what each person pays for it. Fair Divider is a separate, free tool for that part: it splits the rent of a shared flat or a holiday rental room by room, so nobody overpays for the small one. No account needed. The two products share no data.
Questions, bugs, ideas: support@makeroutes.com. A real person reads it.