Route Optimization AI: PestRoutes vs FieldRoutes vs WorkWave

Route optimization sounds like a solved problem. Draw a map, minimize drive time, assign stops — computers are good at this. In practice, pest control routing is messier than that. You have technicians with chemical certifications that apply to some accounts and not others. You have recurring services on quarterly, bi-monthly, and monthly cycles, all due at different times. You have weather cancellations that create urgent reschedules on routes that were already balanced. You have a customer in a gated community who only lets you in between 9 and 11, and another account three blocks away that always runs 45 minutes over the estimated time.

The three platforms pest control companies most commonly evaluate for route optimization AI are PestRoutes, FieldRoutes, and WorkWave Route Manager. All three can generate optimized routes. The differences are in how they handle the exceptions, what kind of routing logic they let you configure, and where they break down.

This comparison covers what each platform actually does in routing, not what their marketing materials describe.

How This Comparison Was Done

The evaluation criteria came from three sources: direct use of all three platforms across a 15-technician operation in the mid-Atlantic region over approximately 18 months, conversations with operations managers at eight other companies who had used two or more of these systems, and analysis of each platform’s routing configuration options as of Q4 2025.

Pricing is approximate. All three platforms use custom quoting, and the numbers vary substantially based on company size, contracted modules, and negotiation. The figures here reflect what mid-size companies (10-30 technicians) report paying.

Feature-by-Feature Breakdown

Automated Route Generation

PestRoutes generates routes based on geographic clustering and time windows. The algorithm respects appointment windows, service durations, and technician start/end locations. Its optimization runs nightly for the following day, and you can trigger a manual re-optimization during the day if cancellations or adds warrant it. The route generation is reliable for standard residential and commercial pest control patterns.

The limitation: PestRoutes’ routing AI does not natively account for technician skill or license qualifications when auto-assigning stops. If your operation has technicians who are licensed for fumigation and others who are not, the system will group stops geographically without considering which technician is qualified to perform the service. You manage that with manual overrides or by pre-filtering job types to specific technician pools before running the optimizer.

FieldRoutes (a ServiceTitan company) runs a similar nightly optimization but adds a “dynamic time of day” adjustment that factors in historical service durations at each specific account. If account 0047 has averaged 52 minutes over its last eight services, FieldRoutes uses 52 minutes in its scheduling calculation, not the default duration attached to the service type. Over a full route, this produces more accurate arrival windows and reduces the compounding lateness problem that happens when every stop runs slightly longer than scheduled.

FieldRoutes also handles technician qualification routing through service-type filters. You configure which service types require which qualifications, and the optimizer only assigns those stops to qualified technicians automatically. This is the biggest functional advantage FieldRoutes holds over PestRoutes for companies with specialized service lines.

WorkWave Route Manager approaches optimization differently. It’s the most configurable of the three, with a route-building interface that exposes more variables to the user: vehicle capacity, load balancing across multiple depots, drive time tolerance settings, and customer priority tiers. For large operations with multiple branches, this level of control is necessary. For a single-location company with 10-15 technicians, the configuration overhead can outweigh the benefit.

WorkWave’s optimization is strong for vehicle routing problems in the classical sense — it was originally built for distribution logistics, not field service specifically. This makes it excellent at geographic efficiency but less tailored to the recurring-service patterns common in pest control, where the same accounts need to be visited on predictable cycles without disrupting existing customer relationships.

Real-Time Adjustments

All three platforms allow dispatchers to drag and drop stops between technicians during the day. The difference is in what happens after that manual change.

PestRoutes recalculates ETAs for the affected technician and updates the customer notification queue. It does not automatically suggest whether the removed stop should go to a different technician or flag if the receiving technician’s day is now overloaded.

FieldRoutes shows a workload indicator alongside each technician’s route, so you can see at a glance that moving three stops to technician B will push their day to 10.5 hours. This visual feedback makes dispatch decisions faster and reduces the mistake of overloading one tech while another finishes at 2 PM.

WorkWave Route Manager offers a “re-optimize affected routes” function that, after a manual change, will recalculate and suggest a re-ordering for the impacted technician’s remaining stops. This is useful when a late-day cancellation opens up time, but it can suggest re-orderings that disrupt appointment windows customers were already notified about. You learn to use it selectively.

Customer Notification Integration

Automated customer notifications (ETA texts and emails) are table stakes at this point. All three send them. The distinctions are minor: PestRoutes and FieldRoutes both integrate notifications into the same platform. WorkWave Route Manager’s notifications are handled through the WorkWave Service platform, which requires a separate license if you’re using Route Manager as a standalone product. For companies that run WorkWave end-to-end, this is not a problem. For companies using Route Manager alongside a different CRM, it adds integration work.

Pricing Comparison

These are ranges reported by current users. None of the three publishes a price list. FieldRoutes pricing increased after the ServiceTitan acquisition; several companies reported 20-35% increases at contract renewal. WorkWave Route Manager costs more when bundled with WorkWave Service (full field service management), which is how most pest control companies use it.

Best For

PestRoutes is the right fit for owner-operators and small teams (under 15 technicians) where manual dispatcher involvement is normal and the routing is geographically straightforward. If your territory is one city or one county and your technicians handle most service types, PestRoutes’ routing is good enough and the platform overall is less expensive. The lack of qualification-based auto-routing matters less when every technician on your team can handle every job.

FieldRoutes works best for mid-size operations (15-50 technicians) running multiple service lines that require technician qualifications to be matched automatically. The historical duration learning is a concrete improvement over fixed-duration scheduling, and it pays off on dense residential routes where accurate time estimation affects customer satisfaction. If you’re on ServiceTitan’s ecosystem for other parts of your business, FieldRoutes integrates cleanly.

WorkWave Route Manager is the choice for large multi-branch operations, companies running mixed fleets (pest control plus lawn or termite crews), or operations that need to integrate route data with third-party systems via API. The configuration overhead is real, but for organizations with a dedicated operations or IT resource, the flexibility is worth it.

Honest Verdict

None of these platforms deliver the kind of autonomous, self-correcting route intelligence that the category name “AI optimization” implies. What they do is apply established vehicle routing algorithms with field-service-specific adjustments. That is genuinely useful and does produce better routes than manual scheduling. It is not magic.

The biggest factor in routing performance is data quality, not algorithm choice. Platforms that learn historical service durations (FieldRoutes does this better than the others) outperform platforms where the service duration estimate is whatever someone typed when they set up the job type two years ago.

PestRoutes and FieldRoutes are now under the same parent company. Feature parity between them will likely increase over time, and customers of both have reported product roadmap convergence in 2025 communications. If you’re evaluating both, ask specifically what the acquisition means for the FieldRoutes brand and whether PestRoutes customers will get access to FieldRoutes routing features without switching platforms.

WorkWave Route Manager is the most technically capable at pure routing logic, and the most expensive to implement and maintain. For a single-location pest control company, it’s probably more than you need. For a regional or national operation, it’s worth the evaluation.

The honest guidance is: before switching platforms for routing improvements, audit your current scheduling data first. Bad service duration estimates, addresses that are two miles off GPS, and technicians who don’t mark jobs complete until the end of the day will limit any platform you run. Fix the data, then evaluate the software.