Route optimisation software decides which vehicle takes which stops and in what order, under real constraints — delivery time windows, driver shift limits, service duration per stop, vehicle capacity and a multi-day horizon when the work does not fit in one shift. EfiRoute runs that solve on the Google Cloud Route Optimization API, the fleet-grade engine behind enterprise logistics platforms, and prices it per optimisation run rather than per driver: free to start with no card, then $29/month (Pro) or $49/month (Business) plus $1 per courier per run. "Optimisation" and "optimization" are the same thing — this page uses the UK spelling.
Route optimisation software takes a list of stops and a list of vehicles and decides two things at once: which vehicle serves which stops, and in what order each one drives them. That second half is the familiar part — any navigation app will sequence a handful of waypoints. The first half is where the value sits, because the stops a given driver should be given depend entirely on what every other driver is given, and that is a combinatorial problem no dispatcher solves well by hand past about twenty stops.
A real optimiser also works under constraints rather than around them. Delivery windows the customer agreed to, the length of a driver's shift, how long each stop actually takes to serve, what fits in a van versus a cargo bike, and whether the work even fits in one day — these are inputs to the solve, not notes someone checks afterwards. Software that sorts stops by proximity and leaves the rest to you is a route planner, not a route optimisation platform, and the difference shows up as an overrunning afternoon rather than as an error message.
EfiRoute runs that solve on the Google Cloud Route Optimization API — the same fleet-grade engine Google licenses to enterprise logistics platforms — and wraps it in the operational layer a dispatcher needs: Excel/CSV import with automatic geocoding, loading lists in route order, a courier app with turn-by-turn navigation, live GPS tracking, customer tracking links, photo and signature proof of delivery, cash collection, and dispatcher-to-courier chat with voice notes.
The category is sold under half a dozen names — fleet optimisation software, delivery route optimisation, transport optimisation, courier routing — but underneath it is the same constrained vehicle routing problem with different constraints switched on. Here is how each one maps to EfiRoute, with the deeper page for each.
Plan every vehicle in one run instead of one route at a time. Each vehicle carries its own start point, working hours and capacity, so a van, a car and a cargo bike on the same board are not handed interchangeable workloads. Up to 10 couriers per project on Pro and 25 on Business — with no per-vehicle seat fee, which is the cost model that normally rules fleet optimisation software out below about fifteen vehicles.
Fleet routing software →Last-mile work is time-window work. Hard windows are enforced in the solve and reported as infeasible when they genuinely cannot be met, rather than quietly broken; customers get a live tracking link so arrival questions stop reaching dispatch; and proof of delivery closes each stop with a photo or signature.
Delivery route optimisation →Time windows, shift length, service duration per stop, vehicle capacity by weight, volume or crate count, and a multi-day horizon when the work does not fit in one shift — solved together rather than in sequence. This is the part that separates a constrained vehicle routing solver from stop sorting.
Advanced route optimisation, in detail →Couriers join a project by invite link or apply to it, and you choose who is assigned before the run, so a stand-in for a single day does not cost a month of licence. Each courier gets their own sorted route on iOS or Android, with native Apple Watch and Wear OS apps for riders who cannot unlock a phone at every stop.
Courier app and assignment →Capacity is a hard limit, not a hint. Weight, volume or crate count per vehicle is enforced during the solve, and stops are never metered separately — a 400-stop day costs exactly what a 40-stop day costs, because the price is per courier included in a run rather than per stop delivered.
Pricing and cost calculator →The Public REST API v1 covers projects, customers, couriers, optimisation runs and route retrieval with API-key authentication, so an ERP, WMS or e-commerce backend can push the day's stops, trigger a run and read the routes back without anyone opening the web app. Native integrations exist for the common e-commerce platforms.
API reference →"Optimisation" is the British, Irish, Australian, New Zealand and South African spelling; "optimization" is the American one. They name the same category and, in this market, largely the same products — vendors simply publish in whichever variant their head office uses. If you arrived here searching with an "s", nothing about the product differs: this page uses the UK form, the rest of the site mostly uses the US form, and the software behind both is identical.
What does differ by region is worth knowing before a vendor review. EfiRoute's interface is available in English, German, French, Italian, Dutch and Turkish, and the solver uses Google's road and traffic model, so UK, Irish and European road networks are covered with the same data quality as North American ones — including both left-hand and right-hand drive geographies. Prices on this site are published in US dollars; Swiss and Liechtenstein visitors see the same figures labelled in CHF, and Stripe handles billing in your own currency.
On data protection, EfiRoute processes courier location and customer address data under GDPR, with data processing agreements in place with every sub-processor. The full list of providers and where each one processes data is set out in the privacy policy — a document worth reading before a procurement review rather than during one.
| Pricing model | Typical price | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Per driver / per seat | $25–$90 per driver per month | Predictable for large fleets, punitive for small ones: the bill grows with headcount whether or not you optimise that day. |
| Monthly base fee with stop or task packages | $125–$1,000 per month | Stops are metered, so a busy week costs more than a quiet one and the package has to be sized for your peak. |
| Enterprise dispatch platform | From roughly $619 per month, usually quote-only | Full logistics suite. Rarely self-service, and almost never worth it below a couple of dozen vehicles. |
| Usage-based (EfiRoute) | $0 free, $29/mo Pro or $49/mo Business + $1 per courier per run | You pay for the computation, not the headcount. Monthly credit is applied first; stops are not metered at all. |
| Operation | Monthly cost |
|---|---|
| 3 couriers, optimised 3× per week | $29 + 3 × 12 × $1 − $29 credit = $36 / month |
| 5 couriers, optimised every weekday | $29 + 5 × 22 × $1 − $29 credit = $110 / month |
| 5 couriers, optimised once a week | 5 × 4 × $1 = $20 of runs — inside the $29 credit, so $29 / month |
| 10 couriers, optimised every weekday | $29 + 10 × 22 × $1 − $29 credit = $220 / month |
Competitor price ranges are the vendors' own published figures at the time of writing; quote-only enterprise tiers are excluded. Check the current list price before relying on any comparison.
Six questions that separate the options quickly. They are deliberately the ones a demo does not answer on its own — ask them against your own worst day, not the vendor's sample data.
Route optimisation software assigns a set of stops across a set of vehicles and sequences each resulting route, while respecting constraints such as delivery time windows, driver shift length, service duration per stop and vehicle capacity. It differs from a route planner in that it decides the assignment across vehicles rather than just ordering a list you have already split by hand — which is the part that becomes impossible to do well manually once you are past roughly twenty stops.
Yes. "Optimisation" is the British, Irish, Australian and New Zealand spelling and "optimization" the American one; they describe the same category and the same products. Search engines treat the two forms as near-equivalent, so vendor shortlists built from either spelling will largely overlap. EfiRoute serves UK and European operations identically to North American ones.
There are four pricing models in the market. Per-driver subscriptions run $25–$90 per driver per month; monthly base fees with stop or task packages run $125–$1,000 per month; enterprise dispatch platforms start around $619 per month and are usually quote-only. EfiRoute uses a usage-based model instead: free to start with no credit card, then $29/month (Pro, up to 10 couriers and 500 stops per project) or $49/month (Business, 25 couriers and 1,000 stops per project), plus $1 per courier included in each optimisation run, with the monthly credit applied first. Five couriers optimised every weekday is about $110/month.
EfiRoute has a permanent free plan — not a trial — with three projects per month, up to two couriers per project and a $5 monthly optimisation credit, and it does not ask for a card. It runs on the same Google Cloud optimisation engine as the paid plans; what the paid plans add is scale (more couriers and stops per project) and a larger monthly credit, not a better solver.
Yes, and the benefit is driven by stops per route and constraint tightness rather than by fleet size: one driver with 60 time-windowed stops gains more than ten drivers with six easy stops each. What has historically excluded small fleets is pricing rather than value — per-driver and per-stop models make fleet-grade software uneconomic below roughly fifteen vehicles, which is exactly what usage-based pricing removes.
Published industry figures for well-constrained multi-vehicle work generally land in the 10–25% range on distance driven, with the larger gains on routes that were previously planned by hand or by local knowledge. The saving comes from two places: better assignment of stops across vehicles, and sequencing against real road and traffic data rather than straight-line proximity. Routes that are already short, dense and repeated daily have the least room to improve.
Yes. The solver uses Google's road and traffic model, which covers UK, Irish and European road networks, and handles both left-hand and right-hand drive geographies. The interface is available in English, German, French, Italian, Dutch and Turkish. Prices are published in US dollars and billed through Stripe in your own currency, and courier and customer data is processed under GDPR with data processing agreements in place with each sub-processor.
Yes. The EfiRoute Public REST API v1 covers projects, customers, couriers, optimisation runs and route retrieval with API-key authentication, so an ERP, WMS or e-commerce backend can create a project, push the day's stops, trigger a run and read the resulting routes programmatically. There are also native integrations for the common e-commerce platforms. The developers page has the endpoint reference and rate limits.