Bottom line: you shouldn’t pay a full duplicate plan for every location if most of your call flow is shared. The main drivers are phone numbers, schedules, and routing complexity.

What can legitimately scale per location

Additional phone numbers: separate numbers for each branch can add cost.
Different hours: each schedule adds routing rules (weekday/weekend/holiday) and edge cases.
Location-specific scripts: different services, offers, or FAQs can increase handling time.
Transfer targets: each location may have different on-call and overflow numbers.

What usually should NOT scale per location

Core platform fee: one account, shared reporting, shared admin controls.
Shared qualification: name, contact info, service type, urgency, and notes are largely universal.
Central dispatch: if all locations route to one dispatch team, routing complexity stays lower.

How to budget: a simple model

Think of pricing as: (base + shared workflow) + (per-location routing extras) + (usage).

Usage: calls/minutes is still the main variable (more locations typically means more volume).
Routing extras: how many unique schedules + unique transfer targets you have.

For a deeper breakdown of what drives the bill, read the AI receptionist cost breakdown.

Vendor questions (copy/paste)

Do you charge per location, per phone number, or per call volume?
Can locations share the same core script, with only transfer targets changing?
How do you handle different hours/holidays per location?
What happens when a transfer fails (overflow + failover message + summary delivery)?

Next step

If you’re setting up routing lanes, start with how to route calls to an AI receptionist. Then sanity-check spend vs recovered leads using the ROI calculator.