google maps predictive travel time

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Predicting future travel times with the Google Maps APIs

Nov 10, 2015

[[read-time]] min read

• If your application is used for scheduling deliveries, and you want to ensure you’ve allowed enough time between deliveries so your drivers won’t be late, you might want to use the pessimistic travel time estimates.
• On the other hand, if you’re building a thermostat app, and you want the house to be warm by the time your user arrives home from work, you might want to use the optimistic travel time estimate to calculate when the user is likely to arrive.
• If you want to give your user an estimate of the most likely travel time to their destination, the default best_guess traffic model will give you the most likely travel time considering both current traffic conditions and historical averages.

“Taking the guesswork out of knowing how long it will take to drive between homes will help us provide a better customer experience to our users” – Curtis Howell, Product Manager Customer Engagement, Redfin

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How To : See What Traffic Will Be Like at a Specific Time with Google Maps

As intuitive as Google Maps is for finding the best routes, it never let you choose departure and arrival times in the mobile app. This feature has long been available on the desktop site, allowing you to see what traffic should be like at a certain time and how long your drive would take at a point in the future. Fortunately, Google has finally added this feature to the app for iPhone and Android.

To try this out, you'll need to update your Google Maps app, which you can do with the links below. When you do, you'll be able to plan ahead by choosing arrival and/or departure times, which is ideal for seeing when you'll need to leave if you want to get to your destination by a specific time.

• Get the latest version of Google Maps: Android | iOS

Setting Departure or Arrival Times

Scheduling a trip based on either when you'd like to leave for, or arrive to a desired location couldn't be easier with Google maps — simply input your destination as you normally would within the the search field along the top of the screen. Tap on "Directions" after doing so to yield available routes.

Afterward, choose the best route a from the selections given. From there, tap on the three-dot menu button on the upper-right and hit "Set depart & arrive time" (Android) or "Set a reminder to leave" (iOS) from the prompt.

Now, either set the time and date you want to "Depart At" on the time table given, or tap on the "Arrive By" tab on the upper-right and adjust the time and date the same way if you want to arrive by a certain time. Hit "Set" once you're done, and Google Maps will yield average travel times for the route, along with either an ETA if you picked the former, or a suggested time for departure if you chose the latter.

As handy as this new feature is, it's worth noting that it does have some limitations. Google Maps currently won't alert you via a notification if you set a departure time. Besides that, traffic conditions aren't updated in real-time, so arrival times can vary, and drastically change due to unforeseen events like traffic accidents and sudden weather downturns.

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Google Maps will now tell you the best time to hit the road

The feature is already live on our devices, so Google might not be doing a lengthy rollout with this particular new feature. The information is presented as a bar graph that looks very similar to the one used to denote hours when businesses are busiest. You can even look one hour in the past, to kick yourself over how much time you might have saved if you just left a little earlier.

The feature is only available in the United States and United Kingdom, according to Android Central , and didn’t accompany an app update — meaning users in other regions will have to wait for Google to flip it on.

Google sources traffic data all day, all around the world, so it’s nice to see it used to deliver a new tool that makes driving easier and traffic jams less unexpected.

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Every couple of months, Google quietly updates Maps with helpful little features, like a parking availability indicator or floor plans with marked staircases and elevators to denote wheelchair-accessible places. It can honestly be difficult to stay on top of everything you can do with Maps, which is why we’ve written a guide featuring the most useful tips and tricks .

At the same time, the company has been fighting back against problems like fake listings for locations and businesses that are aimed at extorting travelers. According to Google, about 70 percent of these listings have been weeded out over the past two years. New policies instituted since then have prevented unverified businesses from creating listings in bulk, or registering locations far away from their existing operation. Google says most of the offenders are now identified before they ever appear to the public.

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How Google Maps uses DeepMind’s AI tools to predict your arrival time

A lot of data and a lot of neural networks.

By James Vincent , a senior reporter who has covered AI, robotics, and more for eight years at The Verge.

Share this story

Google Maps is one of the company’s most widely-used products, and its ability to predict upcoming traffic jams makes it indispensable for many drivers. Each day, says Google, more than 1 billion kilometers of road are driven with the app’s help. But, as the search giant explains in a blog post today, its features have got more accurate thanks to machine learning tools from DeepMind , the London-based AI lab owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet.

In the blog post, Google and DeepMind researchers explain how they take data from various sources and feed it into machine learning models to predict traffic flows. This data includes live traffic information collected anonymously from Android devices, historical traffic data, information like speed limits and construction sites from local governments, and also factors like the quality, size, and direction of any given road. So, in Google’s estimates, paved roads beat unpaved ones, while the algorithm will decide it’s sometimes faster to take a longer stretch of motorway than navigate multiple winding streets.

All this information is fed into neural networks designed by DeepMind that pick out patterns in the data and use them to predict future traffic. Google says its new models have improved the accuracy of Google Maps’ real-time ETAs by up to 50 percent in some cities. It also notes that it’s had to change the data it uses to make these predictions following the outbreak of COVID-19 and the subsequent change in road usage.

“We saw up to a 50 percent decrease in worldwide traffic when lockdowns started in early 2020.”

“We saw up to a 50 percent decrease in worldwide traffic when lockdowns started in early 2020,” writes Google Maps product manager Johann Lau. “To account for this sudden change, we’ve recently updated our models to become more agile — automatically prioritizing historical traffic patterns from the last two to four weeks, and deprioritizing patterns from any time before that.”

The models work by dividing maps into what Google calls “supersegments” — clusters of adjacent streets that share traffic volume. Each of these is paired with an individual neural network that makes traffic predictions for that sector. It isn’t clear how large these supersegments are, but Googles notes they have “dynamic sizes,” suggesting they change as the traffic does, and that each one draws on “terabytes” of data. The key to this process is the use of a special type of neural network known as Graph Neural Network, which Google says is particularly well-suited to processing this sort of mapping data.

For more detail, check our the blog posts from Google and DeepMind here and here .

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Predicting Future Travel Times with the Google Maps APIs

By: ancoris says tag(s): geolocation published: nov 12, 2015.

Hundreds of successful applications in transport, retail, travel and utilities use the Google Maps Platform and Google location services  to get directions, optimise deliveries, estimate miles, organise assets, calculate fares, find closest geolocation by travel time and so on. There has however been a limitation to plan journeys ahead of time and predict travel times for different days and times.

Not any more. A new feature in the Maps APIs called predictive travel times, will use historical time-of-day and day-of-week traffic data to estimate travel times at a future date. This makes it easier than ever to predict how long it will take to get somewhere and suggest the best route even when the departure time is far in the future.

I can think of some really interesting and innovative ways this could be used to help businesses engage with customers and improve efficiencies, for example:

Optimising route planning and delivery times

A parcel delivery company could schedule deliveries and provide estimated time of arrivals to customers to maximise the number of deliveries and reduce missed drops.

Mobile workforce management  

A business with a mobile workforce could schedule jobs for workers and give them a departure time to ensure they reach jobs at the scheduled time. Arrival time could then be communicated to customers.

Travel planning as part of external application

A travel website could allow users to plan a day's sightseeing itinerary, calculating if they can see all the sites in a day and working out the optimum departure time to complete the itinerary.

Tracking companies

Tracking and telematics solution providers could add functionality to their solution, for example predicting when assets will arrive at their destination as well as improving scheduling modules.

There are many other potential uses for predictive travel time and I am sure you can think of a couple of innovative uses in your own business to help engage with customers, improve efficiencies and provide amazing customer experience. Let's get to work on doing this and making Google Maps even more valuable for your business.

Working with a Google Maps Premier Partner

A Google Cloud Partner like Ancoris can help you apply the power of Google Maps to solve current business challenges and develop new digital models using location-based services .

We’re not only a Google Maps Premier Partner but have achieved Google’s Location-Based Services Partner Specialisation. This means we’ve demonstrated both technical proficiency and proven success in building and managing applications using the best of Google Maps Platform and Google Cloud Platform in both web and mobile environments.

If you’d like to find out more about how we can help you, why not take a look at some of our customer success stories or talk to the experts in our Google Maps team .

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How Google Maps helps developers to predict travel time using a new API?

Google, a plethora of technologies, is really inventing some future-driven outputs that truly happen to make every internet user’s life better. The recent buzz from center is the debut of a new Google Maps API providing access to Maps’ trusted predictive journey times. Now developers can scroll over the eyes to build a predictive travel time information in their apps.

How it works

Here Google Maps uses the traffic data over a particular period. That is the system stores the traffic details of every particular day, hour, or minute of different routes or locations and helps itself to predict which is the quickest accessible route to the destination. For instance, if you want to go from city ‘A’ to city ‘B’ at 4 pm on a Wednesday, the first thing you need to do is set the current location and destination. Traffic conditions vary from day to day. It is not the same surrounding of Sunday that you might experience on a Wednesday. The same applies to the hours as well. So, when you check the Maps after setting the destination, it shows you the easiest route, scrapping information from historical and live data secondering the other routes that might be good options for the other days.

This new update benefits many developers who integrate Google Maps in their apps and web interfaces enabling a great experience to their clients. It excels in using both live and predicted traffic information, so that one could plan hours, days, or even weeks prior to the journey time. The Standard Plan benefits to get the traffic features in the available Directions and Distance Matrix APIs and allows up to 2500 requests per day at no cost.

The all new updated API also integrates more waypoints which are now 23 from 8. Unfortunately, the number of waypoints and traffic features remain limited in the JavaScript Maps API to Google Maps for professional customers as of now. So hear developing geeks, to start with the new traffic features, add the departure time parameter to Directions API or Distance Matrix API queries. The traffic conditions will be analyzed and predicted based on the given data of the upcoming journey.

Check out the video below for better view.

Read   The Google Maps Directions API   for more details.

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Predicting Future Travel Times with the Google Maps APIs

by ATTOM Team | Apr 25, 2018 | ATTOM Insights , Property Data Dynamics

Google announced a new feature in the  Google Maps API , the ability for developers to compute travel distance and time between a number of points. This is an interesting feature which can be directly applied to the Real Estate Industry. Their launch partner is  Redfin  (note: Redfin is a current client of Onboard).

“Taking the guesswork out of knowing how long it will take to drive between homes will help us provide a better customer experience to our users” – Curtis Howell, Product Manager Customer Engagement, Redfin

• Duration and Distance  – Estimate travel time and distance based on a recommended route.
• Driving – Indicates distance calculation using the road network.
• Walking – Requests distance calculation for walking via pedestrian paths & sidewalks (where available).
• Bicycling – Requests distance calculation for bicycling via bicycle paths & preferred streets (where available).
• Transit – Requests distance calculation via public transit routes (where available). One or more transit modes can be specified: Bus, Subway, Train, Tram and/or Rail.
• Traffic  – Request using Best guess, Optimistic or Pessimistic calculations based both historical traffic conditions and live traffic. Optionally you can specify either a departure_time or an arrival_time.
• Search Boundary  – The Google API calculates the distance between two known points. It does not offer the ability to determine the outer boundary based on time and/or distance from a location. This is important in Real Estate because the consumer would like to know all properties that are within commuting time/distance from work.
• Cost  – Standard  billing  based on usage. First 2,500 elements are free. $0.50/1,000 up to 100,000 after that. However keep in mind with that plan Google reserves the right to serve ads. You will most likely want to upgrade to their Premium service,  Google Maps API for Work . In which case you will need to speak with a sales person and negotiate pricing.
• Google Map Display Required  – “Use of the Google Maps Distance Matrix API must relate to the display of information on a Google Map; for example, to determine origin-destination pairs that fall within a specific driving time from one another, before requesting and displaying those destinations on a map. Use of the service in an application that doesn’t display a Google map is prohibited.”

How we can help

Onboard Informatics has an  IDX API  which enables our clients to offer commute search in two ways:

• Flat Fee Pricing  – Onboard prices access to the IDX API based on a monthly fee per MLS feed.
• Technology Agnostic  – The API produces XML or JSON, you decide. And can be used with any mapping software. We also offer up geographic boundaries in a variety of formats; GeoJSON, KML, WKT, and/or ESRI shapes.

If you are interested in finding out more about our solutions, contact us today. Overall, the Google announcement today is positive.  We’re always excited when companies push for progress in real estate technology and work toward continuing to improve the experience for home buyers and sellers everywhere.

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Predicting future travel times with the google maps apis.

• If your application is used for scheduling deliveries, and you want to ensure you’ve allowed enough time between deliveries so your drivers won’t be late, you might want to use the pessimistic travel time estimates.
• On the other hand, if you’re building a thermostat app, and you want the house to be warm by the time your user arrives home from work, you might want to use the optimistic travel time estimate to calculate when the user is likely to arrive.
• If you want to give your user an estimate of the most likely travel time to their destination, the default best_guess traffic model will give you the most likely travel time considering both current traffic conditions and historical averages.

“Taking the guesswork out of knowing how long it will take to drive between homes will help us provide a better customer experience to our users”  –  Curtis Howell, Product Manager Customer Engagement, Redfin

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Predicting future travel times with the Google Maps APIs

Elena kelareva.

Product Manager, Google Maps APIs

• If your application is used for scheduling deliveries, and you want to ensure you’ve allowed enough time between deliveries so your drivers won’t be late, you might want to use the pessimistic travel time estimates.
• On the other hand, if you’re building a thermostat app, and you want the house to be warm by the time your user arrives home from work, you might want to use the optimistic travel time estimate to calculate when the user is likely to arrive.
• If you want to give your user an estimate of the most likely travel time to their destination, the default best_guess traffic model will give you the most likely travel time considering both current traffic conditions and historical averages.

“Taking the guesswork out of knowing how long it will take to drive between homes will help us provide a better customer experience to our users” – Curtis Howell, Product Manager Customer Engagement, Redfin

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Distance Matrix API overview

Why use the distance matrix api.

You can use the Distance Matrix API to help determine the most efficient travel routes between multiple possible origins and destinations. For example, which workers to send to job sites, or from which warehouses to send packages.

What can you do with the Distance Matrix API

With the Distance Matrix API, you can provide travel distance and time for a matrix of origins and destinations. You can specify several options, including mode of transportation, such as driving, biking, transit or walking, as well as transit modes, such as bus, subway, train, tram, or rail.

The Distance Matrix API provides information based on the recommended route between start and end points. You can request these kinds of distance data:

• Distance for a selected travel mode
• Distance in kilometers or miles
• Estimated travel time in traffic

How the Distance Matrix API works

The Distance Matrix API uses any number of origins (starting points) and destinations, and returns the distance and travel time between each origin and all requested destinations, starting with the first origin in the request and proceeding step-wise to the next.

For example, if your request specifies A and B as origins, and C and D as destinations, it returns distances and travel time in this order:

The following example shows a request for two origins: Washington, DC and Boston, with a single destination, New York City, NY, in JSON format:

The following table summarizes the resources available through the Distance Matrix API along with the data it returns.

How to use the Distance Matrix API

Available client libraries.

Call this API in the language of your choice through one of the following client libraries:

• Java Client for Google Maps Services
• Python Client for Google Maps Services
• Go Client for Google Maps Services
• Node.js Client for Google Maps Services

The Java Client, Python Client, Go Client and Node.js Client for Google Maps Services are community-supported client libraries, open sourced under the Apache 2.0 License . Download them from GitHub, where you can also find installation instructions and sample code.

What's next

• Start using the Distance Matrix : Go to Get Started .
• Get started with sample requests and responses : Go to Distance Matrix request and response
• Follow best practices : Go to Web Service Best Practices .

Except as otherwise noted, the content of this page is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License , and code samples are licensed under the Apache 2.0 License . For details, see the Google Developers Site Policies . Java is a registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates.

Last updated 2024-04-04 UTC.

How to Predict Traffic on Google Maps for Android

Google Maps has plenty of features which enhance your driving experience. I keep discovering new features like inbuilt fare prediction, crash and speed trap reporting, and traffic prediction. My favorite is the real-time traffic prediction but there is a hidden feature which lets you predict traffic at a certain time. In this guide, I’ll show you how to predict traffic on Google Maps for Android. Let’s get started.

Google Traffic prediction is based on several factors including Public sensors, GPS data, and analysis of the past record of traffic in the area. All of these parameters help you give an accurate and real-time traffic update. This data can also be used to predict traffic in future. For the most part, this data is usually accurate, unless there is a recent change in patterns like construction or a crash at the site.

Read:  Now You Can Share Your Real-Time Location with Google Maps

How To Predict Traffic on Google Maps

To see the prediction of the traffic, First, open the Google Maps app on your Android Smartphone. Tap the Directions button on the bottom right.

Now, enter the starting point and destination details in the input fields to generate a route for your commute.

You’ll see the real-time traffic patches in red on the blue route. Tap on the options button (three vertical dots) on the top right.

Select ‘ set depart & arrive time ‘ to open a new pop up window. Here you can select Time and date of your departure or arrival and tap set .

Google Maps would automatically generate a route at the time with Traffic predictions of that hour.

This is how you predict traffic at odd hours on Google Maps. Unfortunately, you can only use this feature in Android. Even though Google Maps app for iOS is similar to Android, you don’t get traffic preview for that time. Here’s how you can set a reminder for a route on Google Maps for iOS.

Set a Reminder on iOS

Open the Google Maps app on your iOS device, and generate a route by tapping the direction button.

Enter the starting and destination point . After the route is mapped, tap the options button (three horizontal dots) on the top right.

It would open a dialog window with a couple of options. Tap ‘ Set a reminder to leave ‘ to set the time and date for the notification. After Adjusting the time and date, tap ‘ SET REMINDER ‘. You’ll receive a notification when it’s time to leave for your commute.

Must Read: Best Travel Management Apps for Android and iOS

Predict Traffic on Google Maps for Android

Traffic prediction was long available on the desktop site and it’s good to see it coming on Android as well. You can seldom predict what’s on the road and Google helps remove a chunk of probability from the scenario. Of course, there are always a few things which would be inevitable but in normal situations, Google maps fares well. Tell us which Google Maps features do you love the most in the comments below.

Works as an in-house Writer at TechWiser and focuses on the latest smart consumer electronics. Closely follows the latest trends in consumer IoT and how it affects our daily lives. You can follow him on Twitter. Yes, he sometimes speaks in Third Person.

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Plan your commute or trip

Find traffic & transit info.

You can use Google Maps to find all of your frequent trips quickly, in one tap. You’ll get information about your ETA, traffic reports and accidents along the way.

​ Tip : To show the map, tap anywhere on the map or drag the tabs back down.

Change the way that you commute

• Search for your destination in the search bar at the top.
• At the bottom, tap on 'Directions'.
• At the top, select your transportation mode.
• Select your preferred route.

You can pin your trip and find it back in the Go tab next time you need it.

Turn off your regular routes

If your Location History is on, we might show you directions for your regular routes. If you don't want the routes that you take regularly to be associated with your Google Account, you can turn off your Location History.

Note: Your regular routes are only visible to you.

• Scroll to 'Location settings'.
• Tap Location is on .
• At the top, turn off Location History.

Check traffic now & later

To reach your destination as quickly as possible, check typical traffic before you drive. You can avoid the busiest times of day.

• Search for a destination or tap a place on the map.
• At the bottom, tap Directions .

• The current traffic on your route
• Typical traffic by the hour and any slowdowns on the way

Change the mode of transportation for part of your trip

Tip: Only available on mobile and in some locations.

You can combine different modes of transportation, like driving, ride-sharing or bicycling, with transit on the same trip.

Once you’ve selected your route and can view the directions, you may be able to change how you travel for part of your trip. The rest of the route, like transit departure times and total journey time, will be updated when you change the mode of transportation.

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Here's how Google Maps uses AI to predict traffic and calculate routes

Historical traffic patterns are used to help determine what traffic will look like at any given time.

On Thursday, Google shared how it uses artificial intelligence for its Maps app to predict what traffic will look like throughout the day and the best routes its users should take. The tech giant said it analyzes historical traffic patterns for roads over time and combines the database with live traffic conditions to generate predictions.

To improve accuracy, the company recently partnered with DeepMind, an Alphabet AI research lab. They've already seen accurate prediction rates for over 97% of trips, Google said. If it's predicted that traffic will likely become heavy in one direction, the app will automatically find you a lower-traffic alternative.

With many people working from home and going out less often because of the coronavirus , Google said it's updated its model to prioritize traffic patterns from the last two-to-four weeks and deprioritize patterns from any time before that.

See also: Best GPS Systems for 2020

Google also recently announced a new Maps app feature that lets you pay for parking within the app . And in May, the company announced that its Android users could start sharing their Plus Code location .

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Google will now let you use AI to build travel itineraries for your vacations

As we inch toward the summer holidays, Google is announcing a slate of travel updates that place it squarely in the travel planning process and give it a lot more insight into purchasing intent in the travel sector.

First up, Google is rolling out an update to its  Search Generative Experience (SGE) that will allow users to build travel itineraries and trip ideas using AI, the company announced on Wednesday.

The new capability — currently only available in English in the U.S. to users enrolled in Search Labs , its program that lets users experiment with early-stage Google Search experiences and share feedback — draws on ideas from sites across the web, along with reviews, photos and other details that people have submitted to Google for places around the world.

When users ask for something like “plan me a three day trip to Philadelphia that’s all about history,” they will get a sample itinerary that includes attractions and restaurants, as well as an overview of options for flights and hotels, divided up by times of day.

For now, the itineraries are just that: There are no options to buy services or experiences on the spot. When you’re happy with your itinerary, you can export it to Gmail, Docs or Maps.

Google has not commented on when or if it might roll this out more widely. But it points to how the company is experimenting with how and where it can apply its AI engine. A lot of players in the travel industry may be eyeing up the role that generative AI will play in travel services in the coming years — some excitedly, some warily. But even now, startups like Mindtrip and Layla , which provide users with access to AI assistants that are designed to help you plan your trips, are already actively pursuing this.

But with this new update, Google is taking on startups like these while also gathering data about travel purchasing intent (useful for its wider ad business) and learning what kind of appetite its users might have for such services.

Image Credits: Google

Google also announced that it’s making it easier to discover lists of recommendations in Google Maps in select cities in the U.S. and Canada. If you search for a city in Maps, you will now see lists of recommendations for places to go from publishers like The Infatuation, as well as from other users. You will also see curated lists of top, trending, and hidden gem restaurants in 40+ U.S. cities.

Finally, the company is adding new tools to help you customize lists you create, so you can better organize your travel plans or share your favorite spots with your friends and family. You can choose the order the places appear in a list so you can organize them by top favorites or chronologically like an itinerary. Plus, you can link to content from your social channels.

PCMag editors select and review products independently . If you buy through affiliate links, we may earn commissions, which help support our testing .

• Apple Maps vs. Google Maps vs. Waze: The Best Navigation Apps for 2024

If you're traveling to a new place, want to shave time off your daily commute, or need to find the lowest gas price, we've tested the top map apps to help you find the right one.

Google Maps

Long gone are the days of pulling origami-like paper maps from your car’s glove box to determine your location. In contemporary times, nearly everyone has a smartphone with a first- or third-party map app that offers driving, walking, or biking directions. In fact, navigation apps are great general guides to day-to-day living, as they can highlight the cheapest gas in your area or the nearest fast food joint. But which map app is the best? We've thoroughly tested the top three contenders to help you decide.

You Can Trust Our Reviews

Deeper dive: our top tested picks, why we picked it.

Google Maps is an absolutely indispensable modern app. Google’s nearly infinite amount of crowdsourced data gives you detailed instructions on how to get to just about anywhere in the world. You can get a closer look with Street View, download maps for offline use, and even go inside buildings.

Who It’s For

Google Maps is the top choice for navigation apps. It’s a valuable tool whether you’re on foot, in a car, or trying to figure out a subway system. It’s great on any mobile device as well as the web.

• Robust maps, with Google Earth and Street View options
• Crowdsourced, real-time traffic data
• Detailed directions for driving, public transportation, walking, and biking
• Offers internal layouts for buildings
• Web-based version
• Lets you download directions for offline use
• Google’s fuzzy privacy commitment
• Some outdated Street View images

After years of big improvements, Apple Maps is a serious contender for navigation apps. It looks fantastic, presents you with a ton of data, and does an excellent job of keeping your information private. Just note the app is only available on iOS devices.

Apple Maps is for anyone who wants an alternative navigation app. While Google Maps has the edge when it comes to raw accurate data, Apple Maps has closed much of the gap. And Apple brings plenty of its own unique flair, including an amazing 3D Flyover view.

• Clean, simple maps
• Stunning 3D Flyover mode
• Doesn’t hold onto your data
• Air quality reports and temperature readings
• Offline maps
• Limited indoor maps
• Lacks an official web version
• Only on iOS and iPadOS

Waze is Google’s supplemental navigation app designed specifically for drivers. Clear maps help you drive to your destination. Meanwhile, custom features like traffic conditions, community support, and streaming music integration are great to have behind the wheel.

Waze is the ideal navigation app for drivers, with settings as granular as what type of vehicle you drive. Its interface is less useful for other types of navigation, but Waze delivers when it comes to driving.

• Bright, colorful, easy-to-see icons
• Crowdsourced traffic conditions mean better routes
• Social connections for drivers
• Lets you manually control streaming music services
• Difficult to create directions from places other than your current location
• Lacks terrain, satellite, or 3D map imagery
• No true offline options

Buying Guide: Apple Maps vs. Google Maps vs. Waze: The Best Navigation Apps for 2024

Platform power.

The three map apps in this showdown—Apple Maps, Google Maps, and Waze—are entirely free. You don’t need to worry about additional microtransactions or ad banners.

You can access the three apps in different ways. Google’s Maps (a native Android app) and Waze (Google's driver-focused navigation app) are available in the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store. Apple Maps comes preinstalled on every iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch, but there’s no Google Play Store version. The app’s an Apple exclusive, automatically dropping it from contention if you’re an Android owner. 

In terms of web options, you can explore Google Maps and Waze via your favorite web browser. Both services let you plan trips on the desktop before sending the directional information to their respective mobile apps. Unlike Google Maps and Waze, Apple Maps lacks a browser-based version. To make up for that, Apple released its MapKit JS code so web developers can add Apple Maps services to websites. For example, the privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo recently switched to using it for map-related searches and route planning.

Which App Is Best for Driving?

Apple Maps, Google Maps, and Waze each offer satisfactory driving directions, but differ in many ways. Google has the most extensive, information-packed maps—a boon to its Google Maps and Waze products. Apple Maps endured a rough launch over a decade ago, but has made great strides to nearly achieve parity with Google Maps. All three apps offer hands-free, voice-guided operation via Google Assistant or Siri on their respective platforms.

If driving is all you’re doing, Waze is the best option. Google Maps and Apple Maps will do just fine, but Waze is a cut above for driving to a new place from your current location. Its maps are simpler than the others, with larger icons, brighter colors, and fewer distracting on-screen items. Waze also encourages its users to crowdsource its traffic. Its avid driving community marks traffic jams, accidents, police happenings, and road closures to a much greater degree than its rivals. However, unlike Google Maps and Apple Maps, Waze doesn't offer offline maps to download.

Which App Is Best for Cyclists?

Unlike Waze, Apple Maps and Google Maps have many options for alternate modes of travel. Driving directions are first and foremost, but both apps give directions for walking, cycling, and public transit. There are even ride-sharing options that tie into popular services like Lyft and Uber.

For cyclists, Apple Maps has the leg up in terms of general user interface and features. If your phone screen shuts off, Apple Maps automatically wakes up for the next turn-by-turn direction. Google Maps has an option that prevents it from switching to lock mode during turn-by-turn directions, but if that option isn't activated, the app sends a push notification that requires you to unlock your phone. Apple Maps also clearly labels traffic lights, stop signs, and steep hills along your route for proper planning. However, cyclists have reported that Google Maps gives better results, avoiding routes with too many hills or additional traffic that would make the route difficult.

Which App Has the Best Interface?

Apple Maps and Waze offer cleaner, easier-to-read interfaces compared with Google Maps. Bar none, Waze offers the clearest overall map in terms of visual contrast and readability. Unfortunately, it’s only for drivers. 

Apple places right behind Waze with a map that’s good for at-a-glance information. Major landmarks and businesses are clearly legible, and Apple's big, shiny green Go button is more immediate than Google's smaller blue Start button. Apple Maps also has useful temperature and air quality indicators. 

Apple Maps matches Google Maps' business hours, ratings, and website links, but if you dive deep enough you'll discover that Google has more extensive maps. Google Maps not only covers more international locations, but it has awesome building interior maps, too. If you visit a city, Google Maps will likely have detailed internal maps (with multiple floors!) for malls, convention centers, museums, and other public-facing buildings. All that additional information means that Google Maps suffers from a somewhat cluttered interface.

For daily use, Apple Maps is easier to read, but Google Maps is a tiny, digital Athena with all the wisdom in the world—if you know where to find it. 

Which App Has the Best Street View?

Besides basic mapping information, Apple Maps and Google Maps offer additional features that deftly expand the navigation experience. For a long time, Google Maps contained far more cool extras, but Apple Maps has caught up and applied a more thoughtful approach to some Google features. 

Take Google Street View. This handy feature lets you drop into the map and survey the environment via 360-degree photos cobbled together from Google’s fleet of photographing cars and crowdsourced pictures. You’ll find Street View available in more places than Apple Maps’ competing Look Around feature. Look Around is easier to use, though. While Street View takes over your whole device screen, Look Around splits the view between the 360-degree photo and the map. This lets you see where you are while looking around. In terms of usability, Look Around is simply better than Street View, especially when you’re lost. Waze has no such feature.

Of course, Google countered Apple matching Street View by releasing Live View AR mode. This uses your phone’s camera for turn-by-turn directions, tapping augmented reality to project the instructions on the world in front of you. It even highlights certain landmarks. Live View takes everything great about Street View and kicks it up a notch. Apple Maps and Waze offer nothing comparable.  

While Google Maps and Apple Maps both have terrain, satellite, and 3D viewing modes, Apple Maps’ Flyover 3D mode is simply more impressive than Google’s version. Flyover 3D makes select cities resemble tiny dioramas, and it’s a stunning technology display. It's cool, not yet particularly useful. 

If you prize privacy, Apple Maps is the way to go. Your Apple Maps searches and directions remain on your device, not in the cloud. Apple Maps’ location history is tied to random identifiers and resets over time. Google makes it hard to scrub that information, but it is getting better. Still, if you care about privacy and have an iPhone, the choice is clear. 

Mike Williams contributed to this story.

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