Multi-drop route planner with postcodes: how UK couriers plan 100+ drops

Short answer: paste your list into a planner that reorders the drops, and check what “free” really covers. Google Maps and the AA and RAC planners keep your stops in the order you typed them. RouteXL and Spoke’s free web planner reorder up to 20 stops for nothing, and MyWay Route Planner up to 15. For a round of 100 drops, the planners in this guide charge from £8.99 a month. Whichever you use, add the house number: a postcode usually covers about 15 addresses, not one door.

A postcode is not a door

Royal Mail’s address file lists 1.81 million postcodes for 32.4 million delivery points. The Office for National Statistics says a postcode typically holds about 15 addresses and can hold up to 100.

Give a planner only the postcode and the pin lands on the address nearest the middle of it. On a terrace that’s a few doors away. On a farm lane it can be a long walk with a parcel.

• Add the house number or name to every line: “12 Station Road, AB12 3CD”, not just “AB12 3CD”.
• Keep two drops in one postcode as two lines, each with its number. Without numbers they look like one stop.
• Expect gaps on new estates. Royal Mail says a new address can take up to five days to show in its own Postcode Finder and longer to reach other companies’ maps. If a planner can’t find it, use the nearest address and add a note.

Free route planners with postcodes: what’s free and what isn’t

“Free” usually means a limit or a trial. This is what each planner’s own website says, read on 3 October 2026.

What that means for a round of 100 drops:

• The planners most drivers try first don’t reorder. Google Maps, the RAC and the AA drive your stops in the order you typed them, and Google Maps takes 9 stops at a time.
• The free limits here end at 20 stops. RouteXL and Spoke’s web planner sort 20 stops for nothing, and MyWay sorts 15 with as many routes as you like. A round of 100 means splitting the list by hand into five or more routes, or paying.
• Paid prices differ a lot. RouteXL charges €35 a month for routes of up to 100 stops. MyRouteOnline charges per address: €49 a month buys 500, which is about five days of 100 new addresses a day.

How to plan 100+ drops, step by step

The steps are the same in any route planner app. We use our own, MyWay Route Planner, as the example.

1. Get your list as text. Copy it from your manifest, a spreadsheet or an email. One drop per line: house number, street, postcode.
2. Load it. Paste up to 30 lines at a time, or import an Excel or CSV file. One column with the address is enough.
3. Fix what wasn’t found. A mistyped postcode shows up as an address the app can’t find. Correct it before you optimise.
4. Set your start and finish: your home, the depot, or back where you started.
5. Optimise, then look at the map. You see the time and distance for your order and for the optimised one. A pin in the wrong town means a wrong postcode.
6. Load the van in reverse. The last drop goes in first.
7. Drive it. Each stop opens in Google Maps or Waze, or Apple Maps on an iPhone. If an address has no house number, MyWay sends the pin’s GPS coordinates to the sat nav instead.
8. Re-plan when the day changes. Skip a drop, drag one up the list, then re-optimise only the stops that are left.

MyWay orders up to 15 stops for free. A round of 100 or more needs Pro: up to 200 stops on Pro at £8.99 a month in the UK. That limit is per route, and the number of routes is unlimited. For more than 200 drops in one round, split it in two or see which route planner apps have no stop limit.

Does your parcel company already plan the round?

Often it does. DPD tells its owner-drivers that the handheld guides them to every stop. Evri couriers download a manifest, load their parcels in delivery order and set their schedule in Evri’s app. Neither says publicly whether you may deliver in a different order, so check your contract before you re-plan a company round.

A planner of your own earns its keep on work you sequence yourself: your own customers, a pharmacy or florist run, or a day that mixes jobs from several companies. Evri says its couriers average about 75 parcels a day, and one told BBC Panorama in December 2025 about a day of 170. Every mile between those drops comes out of your pay, so it helps to know what a mile really costs you.

FAQ

Is there a free multi-drop route planner in the UK?

Yes, up to a limit. RouteXL and Spoke’s free web planner put up to 20 stops in the best order, and MyWay Route Planner, a phone app, orders up to 15 stops for free with unlimited routes.

Can Google Maps plan a route with multiple postcodes?

Yes, up to 9 stops plus your start, but it drives them in the order you type them. It won’t find the best order.

Can I plan a route with postcodes only?

You can, but each pin lands near the middle of the postcode, which usually covers about 15 addresses. Add house numbers for door-level stops.

Do the AA or RAC route planners do multi-drop?

Not really. The AA planner takes a start, a finish and 4 via points, the RAC planner takes 10 places, and neither puts them in the best order.

How we checked

• Planners: each website with its help and pricing pages, read on 3 October 2026: routexl.com, myrouteonline.com, deliveryplanner.com (Spoke’s free planner), spoke.com (UK prices of the Spoke app) and Google Maps Help. The AA and the RAC publish no limit, so theirs are what the live planners allowed.
• Postcodes: Royal Mail, Postcode Address File statistics for August 2026 (1,810,763 postcodes, 32,429,019 delivery points); Office for National Statistics, “Postal geography”; Ordnance Survey, Code-Point Open documentation, for where a postcode’s pin is placed; Royal Mail on how long address changes take to reach other databases.
• Parcel companies: DPD’s owner-driver pages; Evri’s “How it works” and “Be a courier” pages; BBC Panorama, “Evri: Where’s My Parcel?” (15 December 2025), as reported by Yahoo News.
• MyWay: limits and steps from the app; UK price from the App Store, 1 October 2026.