Meeting Cost Calculator
Add the people in the room by role and salary or hourly rate to see what a meeting costs per minute, per session and per year, then run the live cost ticker while you meet. Everything is calculated privately in your browser.
Overhead covers benefits, payroll taxes, equipment and office space; 1.25–1.4 is a common rule of thumb for fully loaded cost. 2,080 hours = 40 h × 52 weeks. Other costs: room hire, travel, catering, software.
Attendees by role
Cost by role
| Role | People | Loaded rate / person / h | Meeting cost | Share |
|---|
Live meeting cost ticker
Press Start meeting when everyone joins. The ticker counts salary cost in real time.
How to use the Meeting Cost Calculator
- Set the meeting length in minutes and how often it happens (one-off, weekly, monthly and so on).
- Add attendees by role: enter how many people, their pay and whether it is an annual salary or an hourly rate.
- Adjust overhead (1.3 by default) and paid hours per year (2,080) if your company uses different figures.
- Read the result: the total cost, cost per minute and the yearly cost of a recurring meeting update as you type. Press Calculate cost to confirm.
- Press Start meeting when the meeting begins to watch the cost tick up live; Pause or Reset at any time.
- Copy or export the summary or a CSV to share with your team.
Meeting cost formula
The calculator uses the fully loaded hourly cost of each attendee:
- Hourly rate = annual salary ÷ paid hours per year (or the hourly rate you enter).
- Loaded rate = hourly rate × overhead multiplier.
- Meeting cost = Σ (people × loaded rate) × meeting length in hours + other costs.
- Yearly cost = meeting cost × meetings per year (260 for daily on weekdays, 52 weekly, 26 bi-weekly, 12 monthly, 4 quarterly).
Worked example: a manager on $120,000, five team members on $75,000 and a contractor at $60 an hour meet for one hour with an overhead multiplier of 1.3. The manager costs 120,000 ÷ 2,080 × 1.3 = $75.00 an hour, each team member $46.88 and the contractor $78.00. Together that is $387.38 for the hour, or $6.46 for every minute. As a weekly meeting it costs 52 × $387.38 ≈ $20,144 a year.
What a one-hour meeting costs by team size
Approximate cost of a single one-hour meeting, using 2,080 paid hours and a 1.3 overhead multiplier, with everyone on the same salary:
| Attendees | $50,000 salary | $75,000 salary | $100,000 salary | $150,000 salary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 people | $94 | $141 | $188 | $281 |
| 5 people | $156 | $234 | $313 | $469 |
| 8 people | $250 | $375 | $500 | $750 |
| 12 people | $375 | $563 | $750 | $1,125 |
| 20 people | $625 | $938 | $1,250 | $1,875 |
Multiply by 52 for a weekly meeting: a weekly hour with eight people on $100,000 costs about $26,000 a year.
Ways to cut meeting costs
- Shorten the default. Switching 60-minute meetings to 45 or 50 minutes saves 17–25% of their cost at once, and 30-minute slots to 25 minutes saves about 17%.
- Invite fewer people. Cost grows linearly with attendees. People who only need the outcome can read notes instead.
- Review recurring meetings. A recurring meeting is a yearly budget line. Check every quarter whether it still needs to happen at the same frequency.
- Use an agenda and a clear decision. Meetings without a goal tend to run over; the live ticker above makes the cost of overruns visible.
- Go async. Status updates often work better as a short written update or recorded video.
To turn a salary into an hourly rate in more detail, see the salary to hourly calculator.
Frequently asked questions
How is the cost of a meeting calculated?
For each attendee the tool works out an hourly rate (annual salary divided by paid hours per year, or the hourly rate you enter), multiplies it by the overhead multiplier, then by the meeting length in hours. The costs of all attendees are added together, plus any other costs such as room hire or catering.
What overhead multiplier should I use?
Salary is only part of what an employee costs. Benefits, payroll taxes, pension contributions, equipment and office space typically add about 25–40% on top, so a multiplier of 1.25 to 1.4 is a common rule of thumb. Use 1.0 to count salary only, or your finance team's own loaded-cost factor.
Why 2,080 hours per year?
2,080 is 40 hours a week times 52 weeks, the standard figure used to convert a US annual salary to an hourly rate. If you want to account for holidays and vacation, use the hours actually worked, for example about 1,800–1,900, which raises the hourly cost.
How much does a weekly one-hour meeting cost per year?
Multiply the cost of one meeting by 52. In the example loaded on this page, seven people meeting for an hour cost about $387 per meeting, which adds up to roughly $20,000 a year for a single weekly meeting.
Does the live ticker include the other costs?
No. The ticker shows the salary cost of the people in the room accumulating second by second, at the per-minute rate shown under it. Fixed extras such as room hire are included in the total meeting cost above.
Is my salary data sent anywhere?
No. All calculations run in your browser. Your inputs are saved only in this browser's local storage so they are still there next time; nothing is uploaded.
Does the meeting cost include lost productivity?
Not directly. The calculator measures the direct cost of people's time. Many teams also count preparation time and the context-switching cost of interrupting focused work; you can approximate that by increasing the meeting length or adding it under other costs.