What Is the Difference Between a Routing API and a Route Optimization API?

If you're building a map-based or logistics application, you’ll likely come across two terms that sound very similar: Routing API and Route Optimization API . At first glance, they may seem interchangeable. Both deal with routes, distances, and travel time. But in practice, they solve very different problems. In simple terms A routing API calculates the path between given points and returns the actual route (geometry, distance, time) A route optimization API determines the most efficient order o