The four things every commute-cost tool gets wrong — and we get right.
TravelTime shows you a map. Walk Score gives you a score. Zillow tells you the drive time. None of them tell you what the trip actually costs your household. That gap is the entire reason we exist.
Cost per polygon. Not just time.
TravelTime's API returns isochrone polygons of where you can reach by car, transit, bike, walk. Time only. That's the whole surface.
Our polygons carry an additional median_cost_usd field — the real dollar cost to traverse that polygon by the chosen mode. Gas + tolls + parking + transit fares, computed per ZIP code from AAA daily prices, NJTA service-area data, PANYNJ tolls, NJT zone fares.
GET /v1/hexes/8a2a106…fff/isochrone?mode=drive&time=30Multi-stop family schedule. Not single-trip.
Every competitor models one trip at a time. Origin → destination. That misses the entire suburban-family reality: Mom commutes Mon–Fri, drives Aiden to soccer 4x/wk, drives Lily to dance 4x/wk + piano 2x, runs Saturday tournaments 20wk/yr.
Our family-budget endpoint takes a recurring weekly schedule and returns the real monthly + annual transportation budget. Aspen Institute says family youth-sports spending is $1,500/kid/yr — and most families underestimate by 30–50% because nobody adds it up.
POST /v1/family-budget/calculatePer-vehicle fuel grade. Not regular-for-everyone.
If you drive a Volvo XC90, the manual requires premium gasoline — and that's $5.12/gal in NJ today, not the $4.27/gal regular price every other tool uses. Same for BMW, Audi, Mercedes, Lexus, Acura, Genesis, Land Rover, Porsche, Cadillac, most luxury and performance brands.
We pull EPA fueleconomy.gov data to know which grade each trim requires, then price it through our zip→state→sub-PADD →PADD→national cascade. Premium-required vehicles get priced correctly. ~20% more accurate household budget than treating all gas as regular.
vehicle.make=Volvo, vehicle.model=XC90OTP-native multi-station P&R. Not nearest-lot.
From Piscataway, the closest P&R lot by distance is Plainfield (Raritan Valley Line, hourly off-peak). Every "nearest-lot" tool picks it. Wrong.
Real Piscataway commuters drive 4.5 mi to Edison (Northeast Corridor — 4-6 trains/hr, ~22 min to Newark Penn, $5.50 one-way) because end-to-end it's 27 minutes faster. Our worker uses OTP 2.6's native PARKRIDE mode, which evaluates the full chain and picks the best lot — Edison every time for NYC destinations.
mode=park_and_ride, origin=Piscataway, dest=Newark PennHead-to-head
| Capability | CommutingCost | TravelTime | Walk Score | Zillow commute |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Isochrone polygons by mode | ✓ | ✓ | — | — |
| Cost ($) per polygon | ✓ | — | — | — |
| Multi-stop family schedule | ✓ | — | — | — |
| Per-vehicle fuel grade (premium/regular/diesel) | ✓ | — | — | — |
| Per-ZIP gas prices (3,271 tri-state ZIPs/day) | ✓ | — | — | — |
| Toll-aware routing (NJTA, PANYNJ, IBTT) | ✓ | — | — | — |
| Parking-rate database (~3,200 lots) | ✓ | — | — | — |
| OTP-native PARK&RIDE / KISS&RIDE | ✓ | — | — | — |
| 932K-hex national accessibility grid | ✓ | — | — | — |
| Drop-in JS widget for IDX pages | ✓ | — | — | — |
| $99/mo per-agent broker pricing | ✓ | enterprise | — | — |
Built for the broker who has to explain the number.
Your buyer asks "is this house affordable" and means it — including the gas, the tolls, the train fare, the parking, every kid activity they'll drive to for the next 10 years. We give you one number with all of it baked in. So you can answer.