Gas priced on your car
Google and HERE route your car. We know it’s a 2019 Honda CR-V, EPA 30 MPG combined, premium not required. The fuel cost reflects the actual vehicle, the actual grade, and the local pump — not a national average.
The head-to-head
Every map company tells you time.
We tell you money.
Google, Apple, HERE, INRIX, Esri, Mapbox, Rome2Rio, TravelTime — each owns a piece of the mobility stack. None of them price the trip. CommutingCost is the only platform that returns the real dollar cost of a commute across 9 modes, with vehicle-specific gas, per-plaza tolls, per-lot parking, per-zone transit fares, bike-share, and rideshare.
Capability matrix
| Capability | Google Maps Directions + ETA | Apple Maps iOS routing | HERE Routing API + fleet | INRIX Traffic data | Esri Network Analyst GIS | Mapbox Routing API | Rome2Rio Multimodal trip search | TravelTime Isochrone API | CommutingCost True cost, every mode |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Multimodal routing Drive + transit + walk + bike + rideshare in one request | |||||||||
Live traffic + ETA Real-time congestion feeding minute-by-minute arrival | |||||||||
Real-money cost per trip Dollar total: gas + tolls + parking + fare + rideshare | |||||||||
Vehicle-specific gas cost Priced from EPA MPG for a given year/make/model/trim | |||||||||
Facility-level toll pricing Per-plaza rate at the actual tolls your route crosses | |||||||||
Per-lot parking cost Daily + monthly rate at the garage you'd actually park at | |||||||||
Per-zone transit fare Real OD fare from agency GTFS-Fares, not a flat guess | |||||||||
Park & Ride as a mode Picks the station + lot, prices both legs, draws the trip | |||||||||
Kiss & Ride / Uber & Ride / Bike & Ride First-mile ingress + transit, each priced independently | |||||||||
Bike-share pricing Unlock + per-minute from live GBFS feeds | |||||||||
Rideshare pricing Uber / Lyft fare estimate with surge-aware minutes | |||||||||
Annualized cost scaling Per-trip -> weekly / monthly / annual with trip frequency | |||||||||
Multi-user home finder Two commuters, one house — solves for both at once | |||||||||
Precomputed national hex grid Sub-second cost surface for 932K hex origins | |||||||||
Open API with pay-as-you-go Public /v1/trip/plan JSON contract, metered keys |
Full support Partial / hint only Not supportedAssessment reflects public documentation + consumer-grade API capabilities at the time of writing.
Why the gap matters
Routing is solved. Cost isn’t.
The last ten years went into the dot — getting the little blue bubble to move. The next ten belong to the price at the end of the line. Where every incumbent stops at ETA, we start.
Toll plazas, not an estimate
Apple Maps lets you avoid tolls. We tell you which plazasthe route crosses, the peak and off-peak rate at each, and whether EZPass applies. A Hudson crossing is $16.79 at rush hour and $14.79 off — the kind of detail that moves the monthly number.
The actual parking lot
Rome2Rio quotes a city-average garage. We quote the lot you would actually use at the station you’re actually going to — 3,090 commuter + commercial lots indexed, with daily and monthly rates by operator (Park America, LAZ, SP Plus, SpotHero).
Park & Ride is a mode
No one else treats Park & Ride, Kiss & Ride, Uber & Ride, or Bike & Ride as first-class routes. We pick the right station, price both legs, and draw drive-to-lot + rail-to-city as separate colored legs on the map.
Per-trip → per year
A $12 one-way isn’t a decision. $5,760 a year is. Every result scales to weekly / monthly / annual with trip frequency — the number families actually use to pick a house.
Two commuters, one house
Esri will service-area each spouse separately. We solve the intersection: “find the zip codes where both of us commute under 45 minutes AND under $14k a year combined.” No other platform even models the problem.
By the numbers
The coverage behind the number.
9
transport modes
723
transit fare feeds
38,061
fare OD pairs
194
bike-share systems
40 +CA
states of tolls
3,090
parking lots indexed
932,057
hex commute scores
Honest footnote
What we’re not.
Not a navigation app
If you need the little blue bubble to move, use Google or Apple. We don’t do turn-by-turn, live traffic, or voice guidance. We price the trip; they execute it.
Not a traffic data company
INRIX, TomTom, and HERE sell historical and real-time speed feeds to OEMs, cities, and planners. We consume that layer through OSRM; we don’t sell it.
Not a fleet logistics tool
Routific, OnFleet, Samsara optimize many-stop vehicle routes for operators. We’re A to B for an individual or a household — different problem, different math.
Not a map provider
Mapbox and Esri ship tiles, cartography, and SDKs. We render on top of open vector tiles and focus on the one data product nobody else builds: the dollars.
Who buys CommutingCost
Platforms that can’t fake the cost.
Real estate
Zillow-shaped platforms
Attach a “true cost of this commute” chip to every listing. We power the number; your listing page keeps the glory.
Mortgage & underwriting
DTI that includes the drive
Housing + transportation = H+T. If the buyer’s commute adds $14k a year, their DTI isn’t what the ratio says. We quantify it defensibly.
Relocation & HR
Return-to-office math
Pricing an in-office mandate per employee, per zip. Our hex grid returns the true commute cost in milliseconds.
Transit & MPOs
Mode-share planning
Isochrones with dollars. Which neighborhoods actually win when you shift a bus route or add a bike lane?
Auto OEMs & EV
TCO vs the alternative
EV shoppers want the real five-year number. We generate it per-household from their commute, their gas price, their lot.
Fintech & insurance
Household budget signals
Commute cost is a top-5 line item in the household budget and almost no one measures it. Plug our number in.
Frequently asked
How is CommutingCost different from Google Maps?
Google Maps tells you how long a trip takes. CommutingCost tells you what it actually costs - gas priced from your vehicle's EPA MPG, facility-level tolls, per-garage parking, per-zone transit fares, bike-share, and rideshare - across 9 modes for the US and Canada. Google owns live traffic. We own true steady-state cost: time AND money.
Does Apple Maps show commute cost?
Apple Maps shows ETA, basic transit arrivals, and (in iOS 18+) rideshare estimates, but it does not compute the end-to-end dollar cost of a commute. CommutingCost adds gas, tolls, parking, fare, and rideshare for every mode and scales it to weekly / monthly / annual.
What is the difference between CommutingCost and HERE?
HERE is a routing + traffic data platform for fleets, OEMs, and apps - excellent at routing engines and real-time data, but it leaves cost math to the integrator. CommutingCost is cost-first: we return the dollars already computed, with vehicle-specific gas, per-plaza tolls, per-lot parking, and per-zone transit fares.
Is INRIX a commute-cost tool?
No. INRIX is a traffic + mobility data provider for governments, OEMs, and analytics teams. It owns some of the best live traffic in the world. It does not sell an end-user commute-cost product. CommutingCost sits a layer up: we quote the actual dollars a household spends to get to work, school, and practice.
How does CommutingCost compare to Esri's Network Analyst?
Esri's Network Analyst produces drive-time service areas for GIS workflows - great for retail siting and territory planning. CommutingCost ships a precomputed national hex grid of true cost across 9 modes with sub-second response, plus a multi-user home finder that solves for two commuters at once.
Can I replace Mapbox routing with CommutingCost?
If you need shapes on a map, Mapbox is a great primitive. If you need the dollar cost of a trip, Mapbox does not price it. CommutingCost is a thin, metered JSON API that returns the whole cost breakdown for every mode - you can keep Mapbox for cartography and call us for cost.
Rome2Rio shows cost estimates - how are we different?
Rome2Rio ships general multimodal trip search with cost estimates that are often rough averages, especially for driving. CommutingCost prices gas from the exact vehicle's MPG, charges real toll plaza rates, picks the actual garage lot, and uses per-zone agency fares - the number is defensible, not directional.
TravelTime does isochrones - what's new here?
TravelTime returns the polygons of where you can reach by time. CommutingCost attaches a real dollar cost to every reachable area and does it for 9 modes including Park & Ride and Bike & Ride. Both have a hex grid; only ours is scored in dollars.
What does CommutingCost not do?
We do not sell live traffic, turn-by-turn navigation, or map tiles. We don't try to replace Google Maps the app. We own one specific thing: the true steady-state cost of a trip across 9 modes, which no one else prices end-to-end.
See the number everyone else is missing.
Run any origin and destination across all 9 modes and get the real weekly, monthly, and annual cost — gas, tolls, parking, fares, and all.