PlaceMaker Route Planner

Review by eFreeware

PlaceMaker Route Planner is a free Maps & Navigation app from the developer Resting Cranes, and its job is narrow and clear: you assemble a list of places, arrange them in the order you want to visit, and hand the whole thing off to navigation. That is the entire pitch, and for anyone whose day involves more than a single destination, it is a useful one.

The main reason to consider it is the combination of list building and sorting. You can order stops by hand when you already know the sequence you want, or let the app optimize the order for you when you do not. Each stop shows an estimated travel time and distance, so you can see what the list actually costs you before you set off.

It is the kind of tool that makes most sense to people who drive for a living or spend their week moving between addresses. The developer's own framing points at traveling salespeople and route drivers, and the free tier's five-stop limit tells you roughly what scale of trip it is built around.

Building a list, then letting the app sort it

The core loop is straightforward. You create a list of stops, and the app keeps that list as a reusable object rather than a one-off route. Lists are unlimited in the free version, so the constraint is not how many lists you keep but how many places fit in each one.

Sorting is where the app earns its keep. The optimize option suits the case where you simply want a sensible order and do not care how it is reached.

Alongside the order, each stop carries an estimated travel time and distance. That turns the list into something you can plan against rather than a bare set of addresses, and it gives you a way to compare a hand-picked sequence with an optimized one before committing to either.

Maps, navigation handoff and sharing

Once the list is in shape, you have two ways to use it. You can view the stops on a map, which is the better choice for getting a sense of the overall shape of the trip, or you can launch navigation directly from the list. The app is a planner that feeds into navigation rather than a replacement for it, and that division of labor is sensible.

Lists can also be shared with other people by email. For a small team or a household where more than one person needs the same set of stops, that removes the need to read addresses out over the phone or retype them into a second device.

PlaceMaker is a top-rated route planning app that has come over from iOS, and several iOS users praise its routing and ease of use. Those are the developer's chosen testimonials rather than an independent assessment, but they do at least suggest the core loop is well understood by people who plan multi-stop trips regularly.

What the free version covers, and what it asks of you

PlaceMaker is free to install and carries no ads. The free version allows up to five stops in a single list, with no cap on the number of lists you keep. That is a workable arrangement if your trips are short: a handful of errands, a few client visits, a day of appointments in one area.

If five stops is not enough, an in-app purchase raises the limit so you can build longer lists. Longer lists sit behind a payment of some kind. There is no advertising to sit through either way.

The app plans routes and hands them to navigation. Everything else it does follows from that.

Getting the most out of a stop list

The habit worth forming is to build the list before you leave rather than adding stops as you go. The estimated times and distances are most useful when you can see the whole trip at once, and the sorting options are only meaningful if the full set of stops is already there.

Where a sequence is fixed by appointments, sort manually and treat the optimized order as a second opinion. Where nothing is fixed, let the app optimize and then read the resulting times and distances as your plan for the day. Sharing the finished list by email is worth doing whenever someone else is expecting you or following the same route.

Because lists are unlimited, it also pays to keep a few standing ones rather than rebuilding the same trip each week. A recurring delivery round or a regular client circuit becomes a list you open and launch, which is a good deal less work than starting from an empty screen.

The app was released on Android in July 2020 and was last updated in September 2026, with the most recent changes described as bug fixes and performance improvements. A 3.8 average from 218 ratings across more than 50,000 installs suggests a settled app with a mixed reception rather than a runaway favorite, which is worth weighing if you are comparing it against a dedicated navigation app you already trust.

A planner for drivers with several addresses to hit

PlaceMaker does one thing and does it without much decoration: it turns a set of addresses into an ordered list, shows you what that list costs in time and distance, and passes it to navigation. If your work or your week involves visiting several places in one outing, that is a genuinely useful shape for an app to take.

The free version is a fair way to find out whether the approach fits. Five stops per list covers a lot of ordinary trips, and unlimited lists means you can keep as many standing routes as you like. If your routes regularly run longer than that, the in-app purchase is the point at which you decide whether the app has earned a place in your routine.

I would point this at delivery drivers, salespeople working a territory, service technicians, and anyone who plans a day of errands across town. If you only ever need one destination at a time, the list-building and sorting are extra steps you will not use, and an ordinary navigation app will serve you just as well.

What's new in version 1.0.131

Bug fixes and performance enhancements. Please send any feedback or questions to [email protected].