About this tool
The road trip planner
A free, interactive road trip planner where you click to drop stops and we compute the actual driving route between them — using OpenStreetMap's public OSRM routing engine. No account, no API key, no paywall. You get real road geometry, real distance, and a real drive-time estimate.
What is it?
A multi-stop trip planner. You click anywhere on the map to add a stop; we reverse-geocode the click and suggest a name. Once you have at least two stops, we fetch a driving route from the OSRM public demo server (router.project-osrm.org), draw the resulting polyline on the map in solid green, and show the total distance and drive time in the bar at the bottom. Reorder stops in the sidebar with the ↑ ↓ buttons, and the route re-computes automatically.
Unlike most planners, there's no login and no saved-trip limit. Your entire trip is stored locally in your browser under the key mtm_trip. Close the tab, come back tomorrow, and your stops and route are still there.
Who is it for?
- Road-trippers planning multi-stop journeys — someone mapping out a week-long or month-long trip with several overnight cities in between.
- People deciding the order of cities in a cross-country drive, where getting the sequence right saves hours.
- European drivers planning continental trips across multiple countries.
- Families weighing routes for summer vacations, with kids and drive-time tolerance in mind.
- Digital nomads choosing which van-life route makes sense for the next few weeks.
How to use it
- Click the map to add a stop. A prompt opens pre-filled with the nearest city name.
- Click an existing marker to rename it, or clear the text to delete it.
- Use the sidebar to see all stops in order. The ↑ ↓ arrows shuffle stops; the × button removes them.
- Watch the stats bar for live distance and drive time as you add or reorder stops.
- Clear the whole trip with the red “Clear” button in the sidebar header.
Use cases
- Multi-stop road trip planning — the primary reason to use the tool.
- Comparing alternative orderings — “is it faster to go A→B→C or A→C→B?”
- Fuel and budget estimation — total distance gives you a solid fuel cost estimate.
- Trip previewing — seeing if a tempting destination is realistically within drive-time.
- Sharing a plan with travel companions — copy the URL (future feature) or screenshot the map.
Five examples of real use
1. The 10-day Iceland ring road
Plotting the entire Icelandic Ring Road, clockwise from Reykjavík, with overnight stops at Vík, Höfn, Egilsstaðir, Akureyri, and Borgarnes. Total driving time comes out to around 22 hours over 10 days — exactly the number you need to know before booking.
2. The European summer tour
A family plans a three-week trip across ten European cities. They use the reorder buttons to try different sequences and discover that starting in Amsterdam rather than Paris cuts 600 km off the total.
3. The Pacific Coast Highway trip
A couple plans Los Angeles → Santa Barbara → Big Sur → San Francisco → Portland → Seattle. Seeing 30 hours of driving spread across ten days tells them the pace is right.
4. The weekend getaway test
Someone wonders whether a weekend drive to a distant national park is doable. Two clicks later they have their answer: 9 hours each way, too much for a weekend, better as a long weekend with a day off.
5. The van-life next leg
A van-lifer deciding their next month's route adds six candidate destinations and reorders them into the most efficient loop. They screenshot the map as a visual plan before setting off.