Google Maps Direction (Route)

Get the route, distance, and ETA between two coordinates — the same data the Google Maps directions panel shows.

What you get

For each requested origin/destination pair: the resolved origin address, destination address, and up to several alternative routes with street name, distance (meters + human-readable), and travel time (seconds + human-readable).

Use cases

• Delivery & logistics planning — estimate driving time and distance for routing optimization.
• ETA enrichment — add live travel-time columns to CRM, support tickets, or shipment dashboards.
• Real-estate listings — show "X min from downtown / airport / station" on property pages.
• Field-team scheduling — sequence visits with realistic per-leg ETAs.
• Travel-time analytics — measure how access to a location changes across a region.

Why this actor

• Multiple route options — not just the fastest. See alternatives ranked by Google.
• Both distance & ETA in human-readable strings AND raw numbers (meters / seconds) ready for math.
• Locale-aware — addresses come back in the requested language; distances honor the country unit system.
• Coordinate-based input — no need to geocode first; just give lat,lng for both ends.
• Fast — single round-trip per direction request.

Sample input

{
    "origin": "40.7484,-73.9857",
    "destination": "40.7580,-73.9855",
    "language": "en",
    "country": "us"
}

Sample output

{
    "origin_coordinate": [40.7484, -73.9857],
    "origin_address": "20 W 34th St., New York, NY 10001",
    "destination_coordinate": [40.757999999999996, -73.9855],
    "destination_address": "New York, NY 10036",
    "best_routes": [
        {
            "street": "6th Ave/Ave of the Americas",
            "distance_meter": 2816,
            "distance_text": "1.7 miles",
            "estimate_second": 917,
            "estimate_text": "15 min"
        },
        {
            "street": "every 8 min",
            "distance_meter": 1789,
            "distance_text": "1.1 miles",
            "estimate_second": 1012,
            "estimate_text": "17 min"
        },
        {
            "street": "Broadway",
            "distance_meter": 1304,
            "distance_text": "0.8 mile",
            "estimate_second": 1118,
            "estimate_text": "19 min"
        }
    ]
}

Routes and ETAs reflect current traffic conditions at request time, so exact numbers vary run to run.

How to get the inputs

• origin / destination — lat,lng strings (no spaces). Easiest sources:
  • Right-click a point on Google Maps → click the coordinates shown at the top of the context menu to copy.
  • Read from any place URL: the @LAT,LNG,17z segment in the URL.
  • Take the coordinate field from a Google Maps Search Places result.

Tips

• To run a many-to-many distance matrix, loop the actor over your N origins × M destinations.
• Pick country: gb for distances in miles + UK address formatting; jp for kilometers + Japanese addresses.

Pair with other actors

• Google Maps Search Places → grab a place's coordinate field, then pass into this actor as origin or destination.
• Google Maps Suggestion → autocomplete a place name into a coordinate, then route from there.