Directions, Routing & Distance Matrix API — no API key
Pricing
from $2.40 / 1,000 route computeds
Directions, travel times, distance matrices, route optimization, isochrones, geocoding and elevation on OpenStreetMap: a Google Maps Directions API alternative with no API key. Driving, cycling, walking, truck. Polyline + GeoJSON geometry. MCP-ready for Claude and AI agents.
Quick route: where the trip starts — a place name or address ("Torquay VIC", "Flinders Street Station, Melbourne") or coordinates as "lat,lng" ("-38.3385,144.3255"). With destination this makes one route; leave both empty to use routes (batch), matrix, isochrones, geocode or elevation below. Place names are geocoded (one geocoded_location event each).
Quick route: where the trip ends — a place name or address, or "lat,lng". Needs origin.
Quick route: optional stops between origin and destination, in visiting order, up to 18 — each a place name or "lat,lng". Each stop starts a new leg. To reorder stops for the shortest trip, use routes with optimize: true instead.
Quick route: how you travel. car (default), bike, foot, truck, motorcycle, scooter, bus, taxi. Free Apify plans: car only (served by the community router).
What to compute. Optional (a quick route with origin/destination needs no mode): when left out, the Actor runs whichever one of routes, matrix, isochrones, geocode, elevation you send (send only one, or set this). route reads routes, matrix reads matrix, isochrone reads isochrones, geocode reads geocode, elevation reads elevation; the others are ignored. Free (non-paying) Apify users are served by the community routing server: car profile, coordinates only (no geocoding), routes and matrices, no isochrones and no elevation profiles, at most 100 jobs per run.
Mode route, the batch form of the quick route above. Up to 1000 routes per run (free Apify users: at most 100 jobs per run, served by the community routing server). Each item: id (optional, echoed in input.id); locations (2–20: origin, stops, destination — "Apollo Bay VIC", {"lat": -38.3385, "lng": 144.3255}, [lat, lng] or "lat,lng"; routes with more than 20 are skipped); profile (car default, bike, foot, truck, motorcycle, scooter, bus, taxi); alternates (0–3, only for a 2-location route without departAt/arriveAt, otherwise set to 0 with a warning); avoid (any of tolls, highways, ferries, unpaved; bike and foot support only ferries, other values are dropped with a warning); departAt or arriveAt (one of them, YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM, local time at the origin, no time zone; typical speeds, not live traffic); excludePolygons (rings of at least 3 [lng, lat] pairs, GeoJSON order; roads crossing them are avoided); truck (height, width, length in metres, weight, axleLoad in tonnes, hazmat true/false; only with profile truck); optimize (true = reorder the stops between the first and last location for the shortest trip; needs 4–20 locations (with 3 there is nothing to reorder), ignored with a warning on fewer and routed and charged as a plain route; cannot be combined with departAt/arriveAt; sets alternates to 0; the row gets optimizedOrder; charged as one route_computed, like a plain route); avoidLocations (coordinates only, any coordinate format, place names are an input error; the road nearest each point is avoided — a closed bridge, a blocked street); tuning (per-profile preferences: bicycleType road/hybrid/cross/mountain and useRoads 0–1 for bike; useHills 0–1 for bike and foot, 0 avoids hills; walkingSpeedKmh 0.5–25 for foot; shortest true to minimise distance instead of time; roundaboutExits false to drop roundabout exit maneuvers; keys that do not apply to the profile, and unknown keys, are dropped with a warning; out-of-range values are input errors). See the README for examples.
Mode matrix (paid Apify plans only). One object: sources and targets (each 1–50 locations, same formats as routes), profile (default car), departAt (YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM, optional), longPairs (reject default, or route), id (optional). The default engine caps a single matrix pair at 400 km of road (an engine without that cap answers such pairs in the matrix). With reject, a pair of coordinates more than 380 km apart as the crow flies fails the input up front (a long pair found only after geocoding makes the rows no_route); with route, each such pair is computed as a separate route and charged as route_computed. Output is one row per source; each element is charged as matrix_element, unreachable ones included.
Mode isochrone (paid Apify plans only). Up to 10 per run. Each item: location (one location), profile (default car), exactly one of minutes (up to 4 contours, each ≤ 120) or km (up to 4, each ≤ 200), polygons (true for filled polygons, false for boundary lines; default false), denoise (0–1), generalize (metres, ≥ 0, Douglas-Peucker tolerance), id (optional). Output is one row per isochrone with a GeoJSON FeatureCollection.
Mode geocode (paid Apify plans only). Up to 1000 queries per run, one row each. Each item is either forward — text (a place name or address, e.g. "Lorne VIC") — or reverse — lat and lng (what is at this point); exactly one of the two. size (1–10, default 1): results per query, best first. layers (optional): restrict to kinds of place, any of address, street, venue (or poi), locality, localadmin, neighbourhood, county, region, postalcode, country, coarse (all administrative areas). id (optional, echoed). Forward queries are bounded to geocodeCountry, and each result must pass the same word-match check as route place names (at least half of your significant words in the match) unless looseGeocoding is on; the row is geocode_failed only when no result passes. Reverse results are not checked. Each result returned is one geocoded_location event; a geocode_failed query is free.
Mode elevation (paid Apify plans only). Up to 100 lines per run, one row each. Each item: either polyline (an encoded polyline; set polylinePrecision to 5 or 6 to match how it was encoded — default 5, as most tools encode; a route row's route.geometry.polyline6 needs 6) or coordinates ([lng, lat] pairs in GeoJSON order, or {"lat": …, "lng": …} objects), not both; up to 5000 points. intervalM: 0 (default) = one sample per given point, or 10–5000 = a sample every that many metres along the line; at most 5000 samples per line (a longer one is skipped with a warning naming the smallest intervalM that fits). id optional. The row has samples[] (lat, lng, distanceM along the line, elevationM, null where there is no data, e.g. over the sea) and a summary (min, max, total climb and descent, length). One geocoded_location ("Lookup") event per answered line; a line with no elevation data at any sample is no_route and free.
Geometry format(s) on route rows. polyline6 is encoded polyline at 6 decimal places (the engine's native precision); polyline5 is 5 decimal places, the precision most decoders assume by default; geojson is a LineString of [lng, lat]. all returns all three, none drops geometry (smaller rows). Decode each polyline at its own precision.
instructions returns maneuvers with narrative text; maneuvers returns them without text; none returns legs with distance and duration only.
Units used in instruction text. Numeric fields are always metres (distanceM) and seconds (durationS).
Language of the instruction text, one of the 28 listed locales. The engine has no en-AU; en-GB (default) is the closest (metric, British spelling).
0 = no elevation profile. Otherwise 10–1000: an elevation in metres every this many metres along each route (30 is a good choice). Values 1–9 are rejected. Always metres, whatever units says.
ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code (two letters, e.g. AU, NZ, GB) that bounds and biases place-name lookups, in text route locations and in forward geocode queries. Empty = worldwide. Reverse geocoding and coordinates are never bounded by it.
Accept any geocoder hit for a place name, even when none of your words appear in the matched place. Off by default: a name like "Nowhereville XYZ" otherwise matches a venue called "XYZ Finance" and gets routed. When off, such hits are dropped; a location or geocode query left with none comes back as geocode_failed naming the closest match. Reverse geocoding is never filtered.
