Meeting cost calculator:
what does this meeting cost?
Enter how many people attend, what they typically earn and how long the meeting runs. See what one meeting costs, what it costs over a year if it repeats, and a live counter to run during the call. Free, no account, and it runs in your browser.
Runs entirely in your browser
The math happens on this page, on your own machine, and nothing you type is sent to a server. No account needed. If you copy the summary and then sign up from this browser within a day, that summary is saved as a note in your account.
Meeting cost calculator
The meeting
Who is in the room
Group people who earn about the same. The figures below are examples, so type your own.
Assumptions
Time each person spends getting ready, and getting back into their work afterwards. Leave it at 0 to count the meeting only.
Turns each annual salary into an hourly rate. 2,080 is 40 hours a week for 52 weeks. A lower figure leaves out holidays and leave, so each hour costs more.
An employer pays more than the salary: payroll taxes, benefits, equipment and office space come on top. The multiplier adds that share, so 1.3 counts 30% on top of pay. It is off by default, so the result counts pay only.
Meeting cost
Each meeting costs
$335
$5.59 a minute6 hours of people's time
Over a year
$17,440
52 meetings a year312 hours of people's time
A weekly meeting with 6 people costs about $335 each time, or $17,440 a year.
A weekly meeting with 6 people costs about $335 each time, or $17,440 a year.
Live meeting meter
Start it when the meeting starts. It counts what everyone's time costs as the minutes run, using the figures above, and keeps time while you are in another tab.
Cost so far
$0.00
Time
0:00
60 minutes planned
Where each meeting's cost comes from
- Managers$115
2 people at $57.69 an hour
- Team members$220
4 people at $55.00 an hour
Cut the cost before it starts
Ending 15 minutes earlier would save $4,360 a year.
A time-boxed agenda keeps a meeting to the length you planned, and sometimes shows it can be shorter. Draft one with the free agenda generator.
Write an agendaThree steps to a number
Add the people
Add each role in the room, how many people are in it, and an hourly rate or an annual salary. A rough figure is fine: what matters is the order of magnitude.
Set the length and how often
Enter how long the meeting runs and how often it happens, from a one-off call to a weekly team meeting.
Read the cost
See the cost of one meeting and of a year of them, or start the live counter when the meeting begins and watch it climb.
More than one number
A live meter
Start it when the meeting starts and watch the cost climb as the minutes run. It keeps time while you are in another tab and shows how far the meeting has run past its planned length.
The yearly cost of a habit
A weekly hour with eight people looks small on a calendar. Over a year it is around fifty meetings, and the calculator shows that total next to the cost of one.
In your currency
It starts in the currency your browser's language points to, and you can switch to another. Amounts follow your language's number format, so the result can go straight into a message to your team.
From cost to agenda
The calculator shows what ending the meeting a few minutes earlier would save. One click opens the agenda generator, which builds a time-boxed agenda with an owner and an outcome for every item.
How meeting cost is calculated
The cost of a meeting is mostly the time of the people in it. The math is simple, and the assumptions are where the argument is. Here is the basic formula, how to turn a salary into an hourly figure, and what the number leaves out.
The basic formula
Cost equals attendees × average hourly cost × length in hours. That is the whole calculation, and everything else is about choosing the hourly figure. Six people at an average of $60 an hour in a one-hour meeting cost $360. The same group in a 30-minute meeting costs $180. If pay varies a lot across the room, use the average, or add up each person's hourly figure and multiply that by the length.
Turning a salary into an hourly figure
Divide the yearly salary by the hours worked in a year. A full-time year is about 2,080 hours (40 hours × 52 weeks), or nearer 1,800 to 1,900 once holidays and leave are taken out. A salary of $90,000 works out to about $43 an hour on 2,080 hours, or about $49 on 1,840. The calculator uses 2,080 unless you change "Working hours a year". For contractors or anyone paid by the hour, use their hourly rate directly.
Salary or fully loaded cost
Salary understates what an hour costs the company. Payroll taxes, benefits, equipment and office space are often estimated at 25% to 40% on top, which is why many finance teams multiply salary by 1.25 to 1.4 for a fully loaded figure. If you do not know the multiplier your company uses, 1.3 is a reasonable middle. In the calculator, the "Count the full cost of employment" switch applies it: off by default, 1.3 when you turn it on, and you can change the figure. Use salary for a conservative number nobody can argue with, and the loaded figure when you are talking to someone who signs budgets.
Recurring meetings add up
A weekly one-hour meeting with eight people at $50 an hour costs $400 each time. Across 52 weeks that is $20,800 a year, or $18,400 if you count 46 working weeks. A daily 15-minute stand-up for a team of six at the same rate costs $75 a day, or $19,500 over the 260 working days the calculator counts, about $17,250 once 30 days of holidays and leave are taken out. Cutting the weekly meeting to 45 minutes saves a quarter of its cost, $5,200 a year over 52 weeks. Recurring meetings are where most of the yearly cost hides, because nobody adds them up.
What the number leaves out
Preparation and the time it takes to get back into focused work can be added with the prep and context switching field, which starts at 0. Travel for in-person meetings and focus lost beyond those minutes are still left out, so treat the result as a floor. It also says nothing about value: a one-hour meeting that settles a hiring plan can be cheap at any price. Use the number to ask sharper questions. Does everyone need to be there, could it be shorter, and does it have an agenda?
Meeting costs, answered
- How do you calculate the cost of a meeting?
- Multiply the number of attendees by their average hourly cost and by the length of the meeting in hours. Eight people at $50 an hour for 90 minutes cost 8 × 50 × 1.5 = $600. To include benefits and overhead, turn on "Count the full cost of employment": it multiplies pay by 1.3 unless you change the figure. For a recurring meeting, multiply by the number of times it happens in a year.
- How much does a one-hour meeting cost?
- It depends entirely on who is in it. Five people averaging $40 an hour cost $200 for the hour, while ten senior people averaging $120 an hour cost $1,200. There is no honest single average, which is why this calculator asks for your own headcount and pay instead of quoting a statistic about meetings in general.
- How do I turn an annual salary into an hourly rate?
- Divide the salary by the hours worked in a year. A full-time year is about 2,080 hours, 40 hours a week for 52 weeks, so $75,000 is about $36 an hour. If you take holidays and leave out and use 1,800 to 1,900 hours instead, the same salary comes to about $39 to $42 an hour. The calculator uses 2,080 unless you change it.
- Should I use salary or fully loaded cost?
- Salary gives a conservative number that is hard to dispute. Fully loaded cost adds payroll taxes, benefits and overhead, commonly 25% to 40% on top of salary, and is closer to what the company actually pays for the hour. The calculator counts salary until you turn on "Count the full cost of employment". Use salary for a quick sanity check and the loaded cost when you are making a case to someone who owns a budget.
- How much does a weekly meeting cost per year?
- Multiply the cost of one meeting by the number of times it runs. A weekly hour with eight people at $50 an hour is $400 a meeting, $20,800 over 52 weeks, or $18,400 over 46 working weeks. Small recurring meetings are where most of the yearly cost hides, because each one looks cheap on the calendar.
- Is what I enter sent anywhere?
- Not while you use it. The calculator runs entirely in your browser. The headcount, pay and length you enter are used for the math on this page and are not sent to a server, and there is no account or email address to give. The one exception is your choice: if you copy the summary and then sign up from this browser within a day, that summary is saved as a note in your account. Once the page has loaded, the math keeps working even if your connection drops.
- Does the cost include preparation time?
- Not by default. Set "Prep and context switching" to the minutes each person spends getting ready and getting back into their work afterwards. It starts at 0, so until you change it the result counts the meeting itself. Prep is added to the cost of each meeting and to the yearly total, and the live meter shows it as a separate line, since it happened before the meeting started.
- How can I make a meeting cheaper?
- Invite fewer people, make it shorter, or replace it. Share updates in writing and keep the meeting for decisions. Give it an agenda with time boxes so it ends on time, and send a written summary so people who only need the outcome can skip it. Halving the attendee list halves the cost, and a clear agenda often makes a shorter slot possible.
Let the people who skip it read the note
The cheapest seat in a meeting is the one nobody needs to fill. Reline records the meeting on your own computer without sending a bot into the call, transcribes it live and writes the summary and action items into a note you can share, so people who only need the outcome can read it instead of attending.
The free plan covers 1 hour per note, 10 hours of transcription a month and 2 GB of storage. No card needed.
- No bot in the call: Reline records your microphone and system audio on your computer
- A summary and action items in the same note as the transcript, ready to share
- A Meeting ROI Lens checks whether a recorded meeting was productive and suggests what to change
More free tools
- Speaker name editorReplace Speaker 1, Speaker 2 and Unknown Speaker with real names in a WebVTT, SRT, plain text or Teams transcript, then copy or download the rewritten file.
- Transcript redactionReplace everyone in a WebVTT, SRT, plain text or Teams transcript with a consistent pseudonym, and take the email addresses, phone numbers and links out with them.
- Meeting minutes generatorTurn a Zoom, Teams or Google Meet transcript, or your rough notes, into minutes with attendees, decisions, open questions and action items grouped by person.
- Transcript summarizerGet a TL;DR, key points, decisions and action items from a meeting transcript of up to about three hours, in a brief, standard or detailed version.
- Action item extractorPull every task out of a transcript or notes, grouped by owner with due dates and the line it came from, then export it as a CSV or a checklist.
- Meeting agenda generatorBuild a time-boxed agenda with owners and outcomes from a goal and a meeting length, and carry open items over from last meeting's notes.