Google Maps Directions Scraper

Extract driving, walking, bicycling, and transit directions between any two locations from Google Maps — including distance, duration, traffic conditions, route alternatives, and turn-by-turn steps.

What It Does

Provide an origin and a destination (as addresses, place names, or lat,lng coordinates), and this actor returns:

• All route alternatives Google Maps offers (up to 5)
• Distance in both human-readable form ("1.2 mi") and integer meters
• Duration in human-readable form ("8 min") and integer seconds
• "via" road for each route (e.g. "via Broadway")
• Traffic condition notes when available (e.g. "Moderate traffic")
• Turn-by-turn step instructions for the primary route (best-effort)
• Resolved origin and destination strings (what Google actually matched)
• The final Google Maps directions URL you can share or open in a browser

Use Cases

• ETA calculators, courier and logistics planning, dispatch dashboards
• Travel-time monitoring between business locations
• Field-service routing and territory planning
• Sales and customer-visit scheduling
• Real-estate commute analyses
• Tourism / transit research

Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Description
origin	String	yes	—	Starting location (address, place name, or lat,lng)
destination	String	yes	—	Ending location (address, place name, or lat,lng)
travelMode	Enum	no	driving	One of driving, walking, bicycling, transit
language	Enum	no	en	UI language (affects instruction text)
units	Enum	no	metric	metric or imperial distance preference
avoidTolls	Boolean	no	false	Driving mode — avoid toll roads
avoidHighways	Boolean	no	false	Driving mode — avoid highways/motorways
avoidFerries	Boolean	no	false	Driving mode — avoid ferry routes
departureTime	String	no	—	Optional ISO 8601 datetime for transit routing
proxyConfiguration	Object	no	—	Optional Apify proxy (used only as a fallback)

Example input:

{
  "origin": "Times Square, New York, NY",
  "destination": "Central Park, New York, NY",
  "travelMode": "driving"
}

Walking directions:

{
  "origin": "Eiffel Tower, Paris",
  "destination": "Louvre Museum, Paris",
  "travelMode": "walking",
  "language": "en"
}

Output

Each route alternative produces one dataset record:

{
  "origin": "Times Square, New York, NY",
  "destination": "Central Park, New York, NY",
  "originResolved": "Times Square",
  "destinationResolved": "Central Park",
  "midpointLocation": { "lat": 40.7700, "lng": -73.9758 },
  "travelMode": "driving",
  "language": "en",
  "units": "metric",
  "routeIndex": 0,
  "distance": "1.2 mi",
  "distanceMeters": 1931,
  "duration": "8 min",
  "durationSeconds": 480,
  "via": "via Broadway",
  "trafficCondition": "Moderate traffic",
  "steps": [
    { "instruction": "Head north on Broadway", "distance": "0.3 mi" }
  ],
  "googleMapsUrl": "https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Times+Square/Central+Park/?hl=en&travelmode=driving",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-06-16T10:30:00+00:00"
}

Empty fields are omitted from the record.

How It Works

• Loads the canonical Google Maps directions URL in a stealth Chromium browser
• Waits for route alternatives to render, then extracts them from the DOM
• Distance and duration strings are also normalised to integer meters / seconds for downstream analytics

FAQ

How many routes are returned per run? Up to 5 alternatives, in the order Google Maps shows them. routeIndex: 0 is Google's recommended route.

Why does Google sometimes resolve my origin/destination differently? Google Maps performs its own geocoding and may match the closest known place. The originResolved and destinationResolved fields show what it actually matched.

Can I use coordinates instead of addresses? Yes — pass "40.7580,-73.9855" (or similar) as origin/destination and the actor will route between the exact points.

Does this actor use cookies or login? No. Google Maps directions are public and require no authentication.

Is a proxy needed? Usually not. The actor first attempts the run without a proxy, which is the most reliable approach for Google Maps. If you configure a proxy, it is used only as a fallback.

What if Google Maps cannot find a route (e.g. between two continents for driving)? The actor will report no routes found and fail the run gracefully so you can see the issue in the status message.

🗺️ Complete Google Maps Scraper Suite

This actor is part of a comprehensive Google Maps data extraction toolkit by crawlerbros. All actors run on the free Apify plan, use no proxy by default, and return clean, structured data.

Actor	What it does
🏢 Google Maps Business Scraper	Extract business data — name, address, phone, website, rating, reviews, hours, amenities
⭐ Google Maps Reviews Scraper	Scrape reviews with reviewer Local Guide level, photos, mentioned items, owner replies
📸 Google Maps Photos Scraper	Extract all photos from any place — max-resolution URLs, contributor info, categories
🕐 Google Maps Business Hours Scraper	Full 7-day hours, timezone, current local time, next open/close, holiday hours
📊 Google Maps Popular Times Scraper	Busy hours histogram for all 7 days + current busyness + typical visit time
📧 Google Maps Email Extractor	Find business emails + social media links by crawling websites
🗺️ Google Maps Area Scanner	Geographic grid scanning — bypass the 120-place limit with bounding box / circle / polygon
💼 Google Maps Leads Scraper	B2B lead generation with email + phone enrichment, US states + global countries
🤖 Google Maps MCP Server	Unified MCP server combining search + reviews for AI assistants
📍 Google Maps Geocoding Scraper	Bidirectional geocoding — address ↔ coordinates, with address components
🔗 Google Maps Similar Places Scraper	"People also search for" / related place discovery — competitor & alternative finder
🍽️ Google Maps Menu Scraper	Restaurant menu items, prices, descriptions, photos
📌 Google Maps Nearby Scraper	Find places near a coordinate point — lightweight POI search by category
📋 Google Maps Place List Scraper	Extract Google's curated "Top X in Y" lists — best hotels/restaurants/things to do
🌍 Google Maps Timezone Scraper	IANA timezone + current local time from coordinates