Meeting Cost Calculator
Work out what a meeting really costs: attendees, hourly rate or salary and duration in, cost and yearly total out.
This meeting costs —
- Cost per minute
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- Cost per attendee
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- Person-hours burned
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- Loaded hourly cost used
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- Cost per year
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- Person-hours per year
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One-off meeting — no yearly total to project.
Live meeting meter
Start it when the meeting starts and watch the money burn in real time.
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How it works
The cost of a meeting is the time everyone spends in it multiplied by what that time costs: cost = attendees × loaded hourly cost × meeting length in hours. Six people in a one-hour meeting at $75 an hour is 6 × 75 × 1 = $450. If you enter an annual salary instead, it is converted with the standard 2,080 working hours a year (40 hours × 52 weeks), so a $104,000 salary is exactly $50.00 an hour. The overhead multiplier turns raw pay into a fully-loaded cost — payroll taxes, benefits, equipment and office space. 1.25 to 1.4 is the usual range for employees; 1.0 means salary only.
Recurring meetings are projected over a year using 260 working days, 52 weeks, 26 fortnights, 12 months or 4 quarters, so a weekly $450 stand-up is $23,400 a year. Person-hours show the same number as pure time: that stand-up eats 312 hours a year, roughly eight working weeks. The live meter counts up at the team's burn rate per second — handy to project on screen when a meeting overruns.
Every number is worked out in JavaScript in your browser. Nothing about your team, your salaries or your calendar is uploaded, and there is no sign-up and no ads. Copy the summary or download it as a text file to drop into a meeting-audit doc.
Frequently asked questions
How do you calculate the cost of a meeting?
Multiply the number of attendees by the loaded hourly cost of each person by the length of the meeting in hours: cost = attendees × hourly cost × hours. Six people in a one-hour meeting at $75 an hour costs 6 × 75 × 1 = $450. If you only know salaries, divide the annual salary by 2,080 working hours (40 hours × 52 weeks) to get the hourly figure ($104,000 a year is exactly $50.00 an hour) and multiply by an overhead factor of about 1.25 to 1.4 to cover payroll taxes, benefits, equipment and office space.
How much does a weekly one-hour meeting cost per year?
Multiply the cost of a single meeting by 52. A weekly hour with six people at $75 an hour is $450 a meeting, so $23,400 a year and 312 person-hours, roughly eight full working weeks of someone's time. The calculator projects daily (260 a year), weekly, fortnightly, monthly and quarterly meetings the same way, and shows the yearly figure in both money and person-hours because the hours are often the more persuasive number.
Should I use salary or fully-loaded cost?
Fully-loaded cost is the honest number. Salary alone understates what an hour of someone's time costs the business, because it ignores employer taxes, benefits, software, hardware and premises. Multiplying base pay by 1.25 to 1.4 is the common rule of thumb for employees; contractors already bill a loaded rate, so leave the multiplier at 1. Set the multiplier to 1 if you deliberately want the raw payroll figure instead.