**European Economic Area (EEA) developers**

> [!NOTE]
> If your billing address is in the European Economic Area, effective on 8 July 2025, the [Google Maps Platform EEA Terms of Service](https://cloud.google.com/terms/maps-platform/eea) will apply to your use of the Services. Functionality varies by region. [Learn more](https://developers.google.com/maps/comms/eea/faq.md.txt).

[![](https://developers.google.com/static/maps/documentation/javascript/routes/images/routes_over.png "Try the demo")](https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/routes/demo.md.txt)

## Introduction

The Route class provides the `computeRoutes` method for returning the ideal
route between two locations. Provide directions with real-time traffic for transit,
biking, driving, 2-wheel motorized vehicles, or walking between multiple locations.

**Need Route Matrixes?** If you are interested in a route matrix, see
[Route Matrix class overview](https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/routes/route-matrix-class-overview.md.txt).

**Migrating?** If you are migrating from the Directions Service (Legacy)
to the `Route` class, see
[Migrate to the Route class](https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/routes/routes-js-migration.md.txt).

## Why use the Route class?

With the `Route` class, with a wide range of route details you can
route your vehicles or packages according to your preferences while optimizing for cost and
quality.

## What can you do with the Route class?

The `computeRoutes` method returns the ideal route between two
locations. With the Routes library, you can do the following things:

- **Get directions for different ways to travel** :
  - Modes of transportation: transit, driving, two-wheel vehicles, walking, or bicycling.
  - A series of waypoints that you can optimize for the most efficient order in which to travel to them.
- **Use multiple ways to specify origins, destinations, and waypoints** :
  - Text strings. For example: "Chicago, IL", "Darwin, NT, Australia", "1800 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043", or "CWF6+FWX Mountain View, California"
  - Place instances
  - Latitude and longitude coordinates, optionally with vehicle heading
- **Fine-tune your route options** based on your needs and goals:
  - Select fuel or energy-efficient routes for your vehicle's engine type: Diesel, Electric, Hybrid, Gas.
  - Set fine-grained options for traffic calculation, letting you make quality versus latency trade off decisions.
  - Set vehicle heading (direction of travel) and side-of-road information for waypoints to increase ETA accuracy.
  - Specify pass-through versus terminal locations and safe stopover locations.
  - Request toll information, along with route distance and ETA.
- **Control your latency and quality** by requesting only the data you need using a field mask, which helps you avoid unnecessary processing time and higher request billing rates.

## Next steps

- [Try the demo](https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/routes/demo.md.txt)
- [Get started](https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/routes/start.md.txt)
- [Get a route](https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/routes/get-a-route.md.txt)
- [Reference documentation](https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/reference/route.md.txt)