Every Australian business owner gets asked this eventually, usually by a salesperson with a number to sell. Realistically, a 1300 number is a marketing and routing tool, not a phone service and whether it earns its keep depends entirely on where your customers are and how they find you.
1. The Quick Answer
You probably do want an inbound number if you serve customers across more than one city or state, or you advertise in places where a local area code would put people off.
You probably do not need one if you’re a local business whose customers are all within your own area code: a suburban dentist, a local café, a trade serving one metro region. For those businesses a local number is an asset, because it signals "we are near you", and Google's local search results reward exactly that signal.
2. 1300 vs 1800 vs 13 vs Local
| Number Type | Format | Caller Pays | Typically Used For |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1800 | 10 digits (1800 XXX XXX) | Nothing, free to caller | Support lines, complaints, campaigns where you want maximum call volume |
| 1300 | 10 digits (1300 XXX XXX) | Local call rate from a landline | General business lines, sales, national presence |
| 13 | 6 digits (13 XX XX) | Local call rate from a landline | Large brands; short and highly memorable, priced accordingly |
| Local | 10 digits (02/03/07/08) | Their own call rate | Local businesses, local SEO, trades and services with a service area |
All of them can point at exactly the same phones. An inbound number is a front door, not a line. It routes to whatever destination you nominate, and you can change that destination whenever you like.
3. Who Pays for the Call
This is the part most business owners get wrong, so it’s worth being precise.
- 1800: free to the caller from Australian landlines. The business pays the whole cost of every inbound call.
- 1300: the caller pays a local call rate from a landline; the business pays the remainder. Your inbound bill is lower than on an 1800 number.
- From mobiles: calls to 13, 1300 and 1800 numbers are charged at the mobile provider's rates and aren’t automatically free. In practice, most current Australian mobile plans include calls to these numbers in their standard allowance, but it’s the caller's plan that decides, not you.
Since the large majority of calls to Australian businesses now originate from mobiles, the "free call" distinction between 1300 and 1800 matters far less than it did a decade ago. The bigger consideration is your own inbound cost: an 1800 number on a well-advertised campaign can generate a surprisingly large bill, and it also attracts more junk calls precisely because it’s free.
4. What It Actually Costs
There are four separate costs, and providers rarely present them together.
| Cost | Indicative (AUD) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Allocation / setup | $0 – $60 for an ordinary number | Many providers waive this on a plan. Government registration fees also apply through the ACMA's numbering system. |
| Smartnumber purchase | Hundreds to tens of thousands | Memorable patterns and phonewords are allocated by auction or tender through the ACMA; price reflects demand. |
| Monthly service fee | $5 – $30 per number | Sometimes bundled free with a hosted PBX plan |
| Inbound call charges | Per minute, higher from mobiles | The real cost. Get landline and mobile-origin rates separately, in writing. |
The trap is the fourth row. A 1300 number advertised at "$9.95 a month" can cost several hundred dollars a month once you’re taking a few hundred mobile-originated calls. Before you sign, take your actual monthly call volume, assume 80% of it arrives from mobiles, and ask the provider to quote the total.
Ask for the mobile-origination rate specifically
Inbound number pricing is almost always advertised on the landline-origin rate, which is the cheaper one and increasingly the rarer one. The mobile-origin per-minute rate is the number that will determine your bill. If a provider won’t quote it plainly, that tells you something.
5. Rights of Use and Smartnumbers
You don’t own an Australian inbound number in the way you own a domain name. What you hold is rights of use, administered by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) through the national numbering system. Two practical consequences:
- Rights of use are transferable between providers. If you hold them, you can take your 1300 number with you when you change telcos. The number is yours for the life of the business.
- Rented numbers are not. Many providers allocate a 1300 number to you as part of a plan while retaining the rights of use themselves. Leave the provider and the number stays behind. This is the single most expensive mistake businesses make with inbound numbers, because by the time you discover it, the number is on your vehicles and your signage.
Smartnumbers are the memorable ones: repeating patterns like 1300 222 222, or phonewords that spell something on the keypad. They carry extended rights of use, including the ability to on-sell the number and to keep it unconnected for a period rather than losing it. They’re allocated through the ACMA's smartnumbers process, and prices range from modest for an unremarkable pattern to five figures for a highly desirable phoneword.
6. Four Cases Where the Answer Is Yes
You serve customers in more than one state
A single national number that follows your customers is simpler than publishing five local numbers, and it lets you move calls between offices without republishing anything.
You want calls routed by caller location
Inbound numbers support location-based routing: a caller in Perth reaches the Perth branch, a caller in Brisbane reaches Brisbane, from one advertised number. For mobile callers this uses MOLI codes, which is worth understanding before you rely on it, because the accuracy is coarser than most people assume.
You advertise beyond your own area code
National radio, print, trade publications, vehicle livery that travels. A 02 number in a Melbourne magazine costs you calls.
You want a memorable number for brand recall
If your marketing depends on someone remembering a number they heard once, a phoneword is effective. This is the strongest argument for spending real money on a smartnumber.
7. Four Cases Where the Answer Is No
You’re a local business competing on being local
Trades, clinics, cafés, local retail. A local area code is a trust signal for nearby customers, and it’s the more useful number to have listed on your Google Business Profile.
Local search is your main lead source
Your Google Business Profile should carry a phone number consistent with the one shown on your website and in local directories. Chopping and changing that number, or listing a national number for a single-location business, works against you. If you do adopt a 1300 number, update it everywhere at once and keep the local number listed as well.
Your call volume is high and margins are thin
You’re paying for every inbound minute. For a business fielding large volumes of short, low-value calls, a local number where the caller carries the cost may simply be better economics.
You just want the phones to work better
A 1300 number doesn’t answer calls, queue them, or stop them being missed. If the actual problem is that calls go unanswered at 9am on Monday, the fix is queueing and routing in your phone system, not a new number on the front of it. See our call handling guide.
8. Setting One Up Properly
- Decide 1300 or 1800 based on who you want to carry the call cost, and whether free calling will attract useful volume or nuisance volume.
- Search the ACMA numbering system if you want a specific pattern or phoneword, before you get attached to one.
- Confirm rights of use will be in your business name. In writing.
- Get inbound rates for both landline and mobile origin, and model your real volume.
- Point it at a proper phone system, not a mobile. An inbound number routed to one handset just moves the bottleneck.
- Set up the routing: business hours, after hours, overflow, and location-based routing if you’ve multiple sites.
- Keep your local number too. Run both, local for your Google Business Profile and local SEO, 1300 for advertising. There’s no rule requiring you to choose.
- Track them separately. Different numbers into the same queue tell you which marketing is producing calls.
Point 7 is the one most businesses miss. The choice isn’t 1300 or local: a hosted PBX can present, route and report on both, so you get the national reach and keep the local trust signal. With Uniden Voice over Cloud, additional numbers route into the same call flows, queues and reporting, with free number porting if you’re bringing an existing 1300 number across.