How to Get Driving Directions and ETA Without a Google Maps API Key

You want one number: how long is the drive from A to B. The official path to that number runs through a Google Cloud project, a billing account, an API key you have to restrict, and a quota table that bills you per "element." For a side project or an internal dashboard, that is a lot of ceremony for a drive time.

Here is the shortcut I use instead.

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Send two fields, get every route back

The Google Maps Directions API on Apify takes an origin and a destination and returns every route option in one call. The minimum input really is two fields:

{
 "start_addr": "New York, NY",
 "end_addr": "Boston, MA"
}

The default best mode returns driving, transit, flight, and more in a single charge, each with distance, ETA, and turn-by-turn steps.

What you actually get

The fields that matter in practice:

• best_duration and best_distance, formatted like 3 hr 38 min and 215 miles.

• typical_duration_range, the traffic-aware spread (3 hr 21 min to 4 hr 10 min). This is the field that makes route monitoring worth doing.

• durations, comparing travel time across every mode for the same pair.

• google_maps_directions_url, a link that opens the same route in a browser. The most useful field for anything customer facing.

Control when you need it

Avoid tolls and highways, work in miles, and pin the mode:

{
 "start_addr": "Los Angeles, CA",
 "end_addr": "San Francisco, CA",
 "travel_mode": "driving",
 "distance_unit": "miles",
 "avoid_tolls": true,
 "avoid_highways": true
}

You can also pass GPS coordinates or Google Maps place IDs instead of addresses, and set a departure or arrival time with time_type and time_value. Coordinates take precedence over place ID, which takes precedence over address.

Calling it from an API

Run it like any other Apify Actor:

POST /v2/acts/johnvc~google-maps-directions-api/runs

{
 "start_addr": "Brooklyn, NY",
 "end_addr": "Times Square, New York, NY",
 "travel_mode": "transit"
}

Or add it to Claude or Cursor as an MCP tool and skip the glue code entirely:

https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=actors,docs,johnvc/google-maps-directions-api

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Where it pays off: schedules

A route ETA is not a constant. Save a task per corridor you watch (a delivery lane, a commute, a store-to-store leg), attach a schedule, and distance and traffic-aware duration refresh on a cron you pick:

0 7 * * * # daily at 7 AM
0 */6 * * * # every six hours
0 8 * * 1-5 # weekday mornings

One schedule can trigger many tasks at once, so a whole set of routes refreshes in a single pass.

What it costs

$0.01 setup per run plus $0.015 per route lookup, so one lookup is $0.025 flat. That single charge covers every route option the best mode returns, which is the part that compares well against per-element billing.

FAQ

Is this scraper really free of Google Cloud setup?

Yes. Supply the input fields and the Actor handles retrieval. There is no Google Cloud project, no key to restrict, and no per-element quota to reason about.

Is it a scraper or an API?

Both, and that is the point. An official maps API is rate limited and billed per element. A plain scraper hands back messy HTML you still have to parse. This returns the clean structured result of a purpose-built API with the no-key convenience of a scraper.

Can the scraper handle transit and arrival times?

Yes. Set travel_mode to transit, time_type to arrive_by, and put an ISO 8601 datetime in time_value. Transit options come back with stops, lines, operators, and times.

Can I schedule the scraper to track a lane over time?

Yes, and that is where it earns its keep. Save a task, attach a schedule, and store each run so a route history accumulates. See travel time between two addresses for a ready-to-run starting point.

What can this scraper not do?

It routes between points; it does not find the points. Pair it with a places scraper to discover and geocode the businesses first. Flight and two-wheeler modes are region dependent, so they will not resolve for every pair; those rows come back with directions_found: false and a note.

Try it

If you have ever abandoned a project at the "enable billing on your Google Cloud project" step, start here: Google Maps Directions API. Or wire it into an agent with directions via MCP in AI agents.