Matrix · Directions · Isochrones
Travel-time matrices, directions and isochrones across North America — request and response compatible with the Openrouteservice API. Change the base URL, add a key, keep your code.
170× cheaper per element than Google's entry price, and bigger per-call size limits.
50,000 matrix elements a month on the free tier, up to 50 × 50 per request. No card, no sales call.
curl -X POST \
https://api.waymatrix.io/v2/matrix/driving-car \
-H "Authorization: $API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"locations": [
[-87.6298, 41.8781],
[-87.6244, 41.8796],
[-87.6722, 41.9227]
],
"metrics": ["duration", "distance"],
"units": "km"
}'{
"durations": [
[0, 421.3, 782.6],
[402.9, 0, 897.4],
[768.1, 881.5, 0]
],
"distances": [
[0, 2.61, 6.42],
[2.68, 0, 8.13],
[6.35, 8.21, 0]
],
"sources": [
{
"location": [-87.6298, 41.8781],
"snapped_distance": 4.31
},
{
"location": [-87.6244, 41.8796],
"snapped_distance": 11.82
},
{
"location": [-87.6722, 41.9227],
"snapped_distance": 6.09
}
],
"destinations": [
{
"location": [-87.6298, 41.8781],
"snapped_distance": 4.31
},
{
"location": [-87.6244, 41.8796],
"snapped_distance": 11.82
},
{
"location": [-87.6722, 41.9227],
"snapped_distance": 6.09
}
],
"metadata": {
"attribution": "© openrouteservice by HeiGIT | Data from OpenStreetMap",
"service": "matrix",
"timestamp": 1788412800000,
"query": {
"locations": [
[-87.6298, 41.8781],
[-87.6244, 41.8796],
[-87.6722, 41.9227]
],
"metrics": ["duration", "distance"],
"units": "km",
"profile": "driving-car"
},
"engine": {
"version": "9.10.0",
"build_date": "2026-07-28T00:00:00Z",
"graph_date": "2026-07-31T00:00:00Z",
"osm_date": "2026-07-30T00:00:00Z"
},
"element_count": 9
}
}No surprise bill
every plan stops at its allowance
Drop-in
same paths, bodies and response shapes as Openrouteservice
90,000
matrix elements in one call — 300 × 300 origins by destinations
Wiring this up
Narrow on purpose. Each one is the same shape Openrouteservice returns, so your parsing code doesn't change either.
POST /v2/matrix/{profile}
priced by origins × destinations
Every origin to every destination, duration and distance, in one request. This is the call Google charges five dollars a thousand for and caps at 625 elements — a 25 by 25 matrix.
POST /v2/directions/{profile}
10 elements per call
Geometry, turn-by-turn instructions, and alternative routes. Encoded polyline or GeoJSON, whichever your map wants.
POST /v2/isochrones/{profile}
priced by how far it reaches
An isochrone is the shape of everywhere you can reach within a given time: hand it a point and fifteen minutes, and it returns the polygon you could drive to. Site selection, service-area maps, “commute time” filters on a listings site.
Before you switch
The durations, distances and geometries you get back are yours to use in your application. Cache them, store them, build tables from them, keep them as long as they are useful to you.
That is worth checking against whoever you use now. Google’s terms allow caching latitude and longitude for 30 days: the coordinates you sent them, not the answers they sent back.
$29 a month for 1,000,000 elements — 170× less per element than Google's entry price.
An element is one origin paired with one destination, and elements cost the same whether you ask for them in one large matrix or a hundred small ones. So you can work out what a plan covers for your own workload before you spend anything.
That gap is not an introductory rate. It is what routing costs when you are not also paying for live traffic and worldwide coverage — which is the first trade below, and if you need either of those, Google is worth its price.
50,000 elements a month, free and without a credit card. The plan directly above it is $29.
Nothing you build on the free tier stops working when you start paying. The paid plans are the same endpoints, the same request bodies and the same key — a bigger allowance and a larger matrix per request, nothing to re-integrate. Going live is a plan change rather than a project.
That is worth asking about wherever you evaluate. A free tier with no commercial plan above it is a fine place to prototype and nowhere to launch from, and you find out which kind you picked on the day you are least able to change it.
Durations come from speed profiles on the road network, not from cars on it right now. If your product hinges on a minute-accurate ETA in rush hour, buy Google. If you are planning a day’s work, comparing options, or ranking by travel time, you will not miss it.
Excellent in metros, where most routing happens and where OpenStreetMap is often better than commercial data. More variable on rural roads and brand-new subdivisions. Every response carries the date of the map data behind it, so how fresh your answer is stays something you can read rather than something you have to take on trust.
There is no geocoder and no places database here. You send longitude and latitude, we send back numbers. Most teams already have coordinates from the system that created the address — if you don’t, geocode once and cache.
Measured, not asserted
Three hundred origins against three hundred destinations, in a single call to the production API.
| Matrix | Elements | Typical | Slowest in ten |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 × 10 | 100 | 287 ms | 299 ms |
| 50 × 50 | 2,500 | 358 ms | 500 ms |
| 100 × 100 | 10,000 | 612 ms | 642 ms |
| 300 × 300 | 90,000 | 3,024 ms | 3,141 ms |
Ten runs at each size, one request after another from a single machine, timed from the client — so each number includes everything between your code and ours. Measured .
Already on Openrouteservice?
The hosted free tier allows 500 matrix requests a day, and there is no paid plan above it to move up to. That is a generous place to prototype and nowhere to launch from. We speak the same protocol with a far higher ceiling.
Your existing client library, your existing request bodies, your existing parsing. Point it somewhere else — and note that this really is only the base URL.
Works unchanged with:
openrouteservice-py Openrouteservice-js plain HTTP client.py
Removed: - base_url = "https://api.openrouteservice.org"
Added: + base_url = "https://api.waymatrix.io" headers = {"Authorization": API_KEY}That is the entire diff. Everything below the base URL is unchanged.
An element is one origin paired with one destination. A 200 × 150 matrix is 30,000 of them, whether you ask in one request or thirty.
$0
no card required
$29
per month
$99
per month
$299
per month
This API is the routing layer underneath Optimiciti, a route planner for dispatchers and small fleets. If you need to solve a routing optimization problem, use Optimiciti — a problem where the answer is which vehicle goes where, in what order, under constraints like these: