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Note: Polylines are not supported by the Compute Route Matrix feature of the Routes API.The computeRoutes method (REST) and the ComputeRoutes method (gRPC) both return the route represented by a polyline as part of the response. These APIs return two types of polylines:
Basic polyline (default), represents a route but without traffic information embedded in the polyline. Requests that return a basic polyline are billed at the Routes Basic rate. Learn more about billing for Routes API.
Traffic-aware polyline, contain information about the traffic conditions along the route. Traffic conditions are expressed in terms of speed categories (NORMAL
, SLOW
, TRAFFIC_JAM
) applicable on a given interval of the polyline. Requests for traffic-aware polylines are billed at the Routes Preferred rate. Learn more about billing for Routes API. For details, see Configure polyline quality
For more on polylines, see:
Interactive Polyline Encoder Utility lets you create encoded polylines in a UI or decode polylines to display on a map. For example, use this utility to decode a polyline created by the code below.
Note: Special characters in the polylines returned by the REST API are JSON escaped. To display these polylines in the Interactive Polyline Encoder Utility you must first unescape them. There are many utilities available to perform a JSON unescape, such as FreeformatterA polyline is represented by a Polyline (REST) or Polyline (gRPC) object. You can return a polyline in the response at the route, leg, and step level.
Specify which polyline to return by using the response field mask:
At the route level, return a polyline in the response by including routes.polyline
in the response field mask.
At the leg level, return a polyline in the response for each leg of the route by including routes.legs.polyline
.
via
is false for the waypoint to indicate a stop on the route. For example, a route with no intermediate waypoints has only one leg. A route that includes an intermediate waypoint with a stop has two legs. A route that includes one intermediate waypoint with via
set to true has one leg.At the step level, return a polyline in the response for each step of the leg by including routes.legs.steps.polyline
.
For example, to return a polyline for the entire route, for each leg, and for each step of each leg:
curl -X POST -d '{ "origin":{ "address": "1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA" }, "destination":{ "address": "24 Willie Mays Plaza, San Francisco, CA 94107" }, "travelMode": "DRIVE" }' \ -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \ -H 'X-Goog-Api-Key: YOUR_API_KEY' \ -H 'X-Goog-FieldMask: routes.duration,routes.distanceMeters,routes.polyline,routes.legs.polyline,routes.legs.steps.polyline' \ 'https://routes.googleapis.com/directions/v2:computeRoutes'
This request returns the following response which includes the polyline for the route, for each leg of the route, and for each step of the leg:
{ "routes": [ { "legs": [ { "polyline": { "encodedPolyline": "ipkcFfich...@Bs@?A?O?SD{A@o@B}@I?qA?_AA_@@_@?" } }, "steps": [ { "polyline": { "encodedPolyline": "kclcF...@sC@YIOKI" } }, { "polyline": { "encodedPolyline": "wblcF~...SZSF_@?" } }, ... ], "distanceMeters": 56901, "duration": "2420s", "polyline": { "encodedPolyline": "ipkcFfich...@Bs@?A?O?SD{A@o@B}@I?qA?_AA_@@_@?" } } ] }
Because this request only contains an origin and a destination, the returned route only contains a single leg. Therefore, the polyline for the leg and for the route are the same.
If you add an intermediate waypoint to the request, then the returned route contains two legs:
curl -X POST -d '{ "origin":{ "address": "1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA" }, "destination":{ "address": "24 Willie Mays Plaza, San Francisco, CA 94107" }, "intermediates": [ { "address": "450 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305, USA"}, ], "travelMode": "DRIVE", }' \ -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \ -H 'X-Goog-Api-Key: YOUR_API_KEY' \ -H 'X-Goog-FieldMask: routes.duration,routes.distanceMeters,routes.polyline,routes.legs.polyline' \ 'https://routes.googleapis.com/directions/v2:computeRoutes'
This request returns two legs, each with a unique polyline, and a polyline for the entire route:
{ "routes": [ { "legs": [ { "polyline": { "encodedPolyline": "kclcFfqchV?A...?I@G?GAECCCEKICBAFG" } "steps": [ { "polyline": { "encodedPolyline": "kclcFfqch...YIOKI" } }, ... }, { "polyline": { "encodedPolyline": "ojmcFtethV?K...QOYQOGA?_@MUG[Ga@G" } "steps": [ { "polyline": { "encodedPolyline": "uypeFbo`jVgJq...PoBiC" } }, ... } ], "distanceMeters": 68403, "duration": "3759s", "polyline": { "encodedPolyline": "kclcFfqchV?A?CBKF[Ha...?GAECCCEKICBAFGJEBE" } } ] }Polyline quality
The quality of a polyline can be described in the following terms:
The floating-point precision of the points
Points are specified as latitude and longitude values, which are represented in single-precision floating-point format. This works well for small values (which can be represented precisely), but precision decreases as values increase because of floating-point rounding errors.
In computeRoutes method (REST) and ComputeRoutes, this is controlled by polylineEncoding
.
The number of points that make up the polyline
The more points there are, the smoother the polyline (especially in curves).
In computeRoutes method (REST) and ComputeRoutes, this is controlled by polylineQuality
.
Use the polylineEncoding
request option for controlling the polyline type. The polylineEncoding
property controls whether the polyline will be encoded as ENCODED_POLYLINE
(default), meaning the Encoded Polyline Algorithm Format will be used, or GEO_JSON_LINESTRING
, meaning the GeoJSON LineString format will be used.
For example, in the request body:
curl -X POST -d '{ "origin":{ "address": "1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA" }, "destination":{ "address": "24 Willie Mays Plaza, San Francisco, CA 94107" }, "travelMode": "DRIVE", "polylineEncoding": "ENCODED_POLYLINE" }' \ -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \ -H 'X-Goog-Api-Key: YOUR_API_KEY' \ -H 'X-Goog-FieldMask: routes.duration,routes.distanceMeters,routes.polyline,routes.legs.polyline' \ 'https://routes.googleapis.com/directions/v2:computeRoutes'Configure Polyline quality
polylineQuality
specifies the quality of the polyline as HIGH_QUALITY
or OVERVIEW
(default). With OVERVIEW
, the polyline is composed using a small number of points and has a lower request latency than HIGH_QUALITY
.
For example, in the request body:
{ "origin":{ "location":{ "latLng":{ "latitude": 37.419734, "longitude": -122.0827784 } } }, "destination":{ "location":{ "latLng":{ "latitude": 37.417670, "longitude": -122.079595 } } }, "travelMode": "DRIVE", "routingPreference": "TRAFFIC_AWARE", "polylineQuality": "HIGH_QUALITY", "polylineEncoding": "ENCODED_POLYLINE", "departureTime": "2023-10-15T15:01:23.045123456Z", ... }Request a traffic-aware polyline Caution: Requests for a traffic-aware polyline are billed at a higher rate. Learn more about billing for Routes API.
The examples shown above all return basic polylines, meaning polylines without traffic information. In addition, you can also request that the polyline contains traffic information for the route and for each leg of the route.
Note: Traffic information is not available in the polyline at the step level.Traffic-aware polylines contain information about the traffic conditions along the route. Traffic conditions are expressed in terms of speed categories (NORMAL
, SLOW
, TRAFFIC_JAM
) for a given interval of the response polyline. The intervals are defined by the indexes of their starting (inclusive) and ending (exclusive) polyline points.
For example, the following response shows NORMAL
traffic between polyline points 2 and 4:
{ "startPolylinePointIndex": 2, "endPolylinePointIndex": 4, "speed": "NORMAL" }
To make a request to compute a traffic-aware polyline, set the following properties in the request:
Set the extraComputations
array field to TRAFFIC_ON_POLYLINE
to enable the traffic calculation.
Set the travelMode
to DRIVE
or TWO_WHEELER
. Requests for any other travel mode return an error.
Specify either the TRAFFIC_AWARE
or TRAFFIC_AWARE_OPTIMAL
routing preference in the request. For more information, see Configure quality versus latency.
Set a response field mask that specifies to return the response properties:
At the route level, return all travel information in the response by including routes.travelAdvisory
in the response field mask. To return just the traffic information, specify routes.travelAdvisory.speedReadingIntervals
At the leg level, return all travel information in the response for each leg of the route by including routes.legs.travelAdvisory
. To return just the traffic information, specify routes.legs.travelAdvisory.speedReadingIntervals
.
curl -X POST -d '{ "origin":{ "address": "1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA" }, "destination":{ "address": "24 Willie Mays Plaza, San Francisco, CA 94107" }, "travelMode": "DRIVE", "extraComputations": ["TRAFFIC_ON_POLYLINE"], "routingPreference": "TRAFFIC_AWARE_OPTIMAL" }' \ -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \ -H 'X-Goog-Api-Key: YOUR_API_KEY' \ -H 'X-Goog-FieldMask: routes.duration,routes.distanceMeters,routes.polyline,routes.legs.polyline,routes.travelAdvisory,routes.legs.travelAdvisory' \ 'https://routes.googleapis.com/directions/v2:computeRoutes'Example response for a traffic-aware polyline
In the response, traffic data is encoded in the polyline and is contained in the travelAdvisory
field, of type RouteLegTravelAdvisory object (each leg) and RouteTravelAdvisory object (route).
For example:
{ "routes": [ { "legs": { "polyline": { "encodedPolyline": "}boeF~zbjVAg@EmB`GWHlD" }, // Traffic data for the leg. "travelAdvisory": { "speedReadingIntervals": [ { "endPolylinePointIndex": 1, "speed": "NORMAL" }, { "startPolylinePointIndex": 1, "endPolylinePointIndex": 2, "speed": "SLOW" }, { "startPolylinePointIndex": 2, "endPolylinePointIndex": 4, "speed": "NORMAL" } ] } }, "polyline": { "encodedPolyline": "}boeF~zbjVAg@EmB`GWHlD" }, // Traffic data for the route. "travelAdvisory": { "speedReadingIntervals": [ { "endPolylinePointIndex": 1, "speed": "NORMAL" }, { "startPolylinePointIndex": 1, "endPolylinePointIndex": 2, "speed": "SLOW" }, { "startPolylinePointIndex": 2, "endPolylinePointIndex": 4, "speed": "NORMAL" } ] } } ] }
Both RouteTravelAdvisory
and RouteLegTravelAdvisory
include an array field called speedReadingIntervals
that contains traffic speed information. Each object in the array is represented by a SpeedReadingInterval (REST) or SpeedReadingInterval (gRPC) object.
A SpeedReadingInterval
object includes speed reading for a route interval, such as NORMAL
, SLOW
, or TRAFFIC_JAM
. The entire array of objects covers the entire polyline of the route without overlap. The start point of a specified interval is the same as the endpoint of the preceding interval.
Every interval is described by its startPolylinePointIndex
, endPolylinePointIndex
, and the corresponding speed category. Notice that the lack of start index within the interval corresponds with index 0 in accordance with the proto3 practices.
The startPolylinePointIndex
and endPolylinePointIndex
values are not always consecutive. For example:
{ "startPolylinePointIndex": 2, "endPolylinePointIndex": 4, "speed": "NORMAL" }
In this case, the traffic conditions were the same from index 2 to index 4.
Render traffic-aware polylines with Maps SDKWe recommend displaying traffic aware polylines on the map using the various features offered by Google Maps SDKs including custom coloring, strokes, and patterns along the polyline stretches. For more details about using polylines, see Polyline Features for Android and Polyline Features for iOS.
Example Polyline renderingThe users of Maps SDK have the opportunity of defining a customized mapping logic between the speed categories and the polyline rendering schemas. As an example, one might decide to display "NORMAL" speed as a thick blue line on the map while "SLOW" speed might be displayed as a thick orange line, for example.
The following snippets add a thick blue polyline with geodesic segments from Melbourne to Perth. For more information, see Customizing appearances (for Android) and Customize the Polyline (for iOS).
Android JavaPolyline line = map.addPolyline(new PolylineOptions() .add(new LatLng(-37.81319, 144.96298), new LatLng(-31.95285, 115.85734)) .width(25) .color(Color.BLUE) .geodesic(true));Kotlin
val line: Polyline = map.addPolyline( PolylineOptions() .add(LatLng(-37.81319, 144.96298), LatLng(-31.95285, 115.85734)) .width(25f) .color(Color.BLUE) .geodesic(true) )iOS Objective-C
GMSMutablePath *path = [GMSMutablePath path]; [path addLatitude:-37.81319 longitude:144.96298]; [path addLatitude:-31.95285 longitude:115.85734]; GMSPolyline *polyline = [GMSPolyline polylineWithPath:path]; polyline.strokeWidth = 10.f; polyline.strokeColor = .blue; polyline.geodesic = YES; polyline.map = mapView;Swift
let path = GMSMutablePath() path.addLatitude(-37.81319, longitude: 144.96298) path.addLatitude(-31.95285, longitude: 115.85734) let polyline = GMSPolyline(path: path) polyline.strokeWidth = 10.0 polyline.geodesic = true polyline.map = mapViewUse encoded polylines with Search Along Route
Use Places API Text Search to search along a calculated route. You pass the encoded polyline of a precalculated route from Routes API Compute Routes to the Text Search request. The response then contains places that match the search criteria and are also located near the specified route. For details, see search along a route.
For example, to return cafes along the route between the origin and destination:
Node.jsconst API_KEY = 'YOUR_API_KEY'; const routes_service = 'https://routes.googleapis.com/directions/v2:computeRoutes'; const textSearch_service = 'https://places.googleapis.com/v1/places:searchText';function init(){ const routes_request = { "origin":{ "address": "1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA" }, "destination":{ "address": "24 Willie Mays Plaza, San Francisco, CA 94107" }, "travelMode": "DRIVE" }; const textSearch_request = { "textQuery": "cafe", "searchAlongRouteParameters": { "polyline": { "encodedPolyline": "" } } }; fetchResources(routes_service,routes_request).then(routes => { textSearch_request.searchAlongRouteParameters.polyline.encodedPolyline = routes.routes[0].polyline.encodedPolyline; fetchResources(textSearch_service,textSearch_request).then(places => { console.log(places); }); }); } async function fetchResources(resource,reqBody){ const response = await fetch(resource, { method: 'POST', body: JSON.stringify(reqBody), headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json', 'X-Goog-Api-Key': API_KEY, 'X-Goog-FieldMask': '*' } }); const responseJSON = await response.json(); return responseJSON; } init();
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 2025-08-14 UTC.
[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Missing the information I need","missingTheInformationINeed","thumb-down"],["Too complicated / too many steps","tooComplicatedTooManySteps","thumb-down"],["Out of date","outOfDate","thumb-down"],["Samples / code issue","samplesCodeIssue","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],["Last updated 2025-08-14 UTC."],[[["The Routes API returns polylines representing routes, available in basic (without traffic) and traffic-aware formats, impacting billing rates."],["You can request polylines at the route, leg, and step levels using the response field mask."],["Polyline quality is influenced by point precision and the number of points, configurable using `polylineEncoding` and `polylineQuality` options."],["Traffic-aware polylines, billed at a higher rate, provide speed information (`NORMAL`, `SLOW`, `TRAFFIC_JAM`) along route intervals."],["Render traffic-aware polylines using Google Maps SDKs for customized visualizations based on speed categories."]]],["Polylines, digital representations of routes, are obtained from the `computeRoutes` method, and can be basic or traffic-aware. Traffic data is encoded within traffic-aware polylines using speed categories. Polylines can be requested at route, leg, or step levels. The quality can be configured through precision and the number of points, impacting smoothness and latency. Traffic-aware polylines, which require specific travel modes and routing preferences, are billable at a higher rate. The Routes API doesn't support polylines in Compute Route Matrix. Finally, it is possible to search for places along a polyline using the Places API Text Search.\n"]]
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