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Meeting Cost Calculator

Calculators · Added

Enter who is in the room and what an hour of their time costs, and this adds it up. Groups can have different rates, preparation and recovery time can be counted alongside the scheduled hour, and a recurring slot gets an annual figure — because the number that changes behaviour is rarely the cost of one meeting, it is the cost of the same meeting fifty times.

Who is in the room
min
min

Reading beforehand and refocusing afterwards. 0 to leave it out.

Common lengths

46 a year rather than 52, allowing for holidays and the weeks it is cancelled.

%

Added to every rate for payroll taxes, benefits and space. 0 treats the rate as the full cost.

How to use the meeting cost calculator

  1. 1List the groups in the room. Give each a headcount and an hourly rate — split them up when the rates differ, since one blended average hides who the meeting is expensive for.
  2. 2Set the scheduled length, or use one of the preset durations.
  3. 3Add preparation time per person if there is reading beforehand or refocusing afterwards. Leave it at zero to price the scheduled hour alone.
  4. 4Choose how often the meeting runs to get the annual figure, and add an overhead percentage if you want employer costs rather than pay.

Examples

A weekly team meeting

Input
5 people at 40 an hour, 1 manager at 85, 60 minutes, weekly
Result
285 per meeting, 13,110 a year

The annual figure assumes 46 occurrences rather than 52, allowing for leave and the weeks it does not happen.

The half-hour that is not half an hour

Input
8 people at 50 an hour, 30 minutes scheduled, 20 minutes prep each
Result
333 in total, of which 133 is preparation

Preparation is 40% of the cost here. A 30-minute meeting consumes 50 minutes of each attendee's day.

Starting five minutes late

Input
12 people at 60 an hour, 60 minutes, 5 minutes late
Result
60 per occurrence, or 2,760 a year on a weekly slot

This is the figure that tends to change behaviour, because it is recoverable without cancelling anything.

About the meeting cost calculator

The arithmetic, which is deliberately simple

Cost is person-hours multiplied by an hourly rate, summed across the groups in the room. Four people on 40 an hour and one on 90, for one hour, is 4 × 40 + 1 × 90 = 250. There is nothing more sophisticated behind the headline, and there should not be — the value of this calculation is that it is checkable on the back of an envelope by anyone who disputes it.

Everything that makes the number interesting is a choice rather than a formula: which rate to use, whether the hour is really an hour, and how many times a year the slot actually runs. Each of those is an input here rather than a hidden constant, because they are where reasonable people disagree, and a tool that decided them quietly would produce an answer nobody could argue with or trust.

Why splitting the room by rate matters

A single blended rate gives the same total as separate groups, so it is tempting to use one. It hides the thing worth seeing, though. A meeting with eight junior attendees and two senior ones has a different shape from one with two and eight, even at identical cost, and the per-group breakdown shows which half of the room the expense actually sits in.

That matters because the usual remedy is not cancelling the meeting, it is changing who has to be there. Most recurring meetings accumulate attendees who joined for a reason that expired, and the cost of an optional attendee is the easiest saving available — it needs no one's agreement but theirs.

What the number is good for

Three uses hold up. Sizing the invite list, because the marginal cost of one more person is immediate and concrete. Questioning a recurrence, because the annual figure for a standing slot is often startling in a way the weekly figure is not. And pricing punctuality, since a meeting that habitually starts five minutes late is paying that tax at every occurrence, and it is the one cost on this page that can be removed without anybody giving anything up.

One use that does not hold up is performance measurement. Counting the cost of the meetings someone attends says nothing about whether they were useful in them, and a team that responds to the metric by declining meetings it should attend has made things worse at no saving. The figure is a prompt for a conversation, not an output to be minimised.

Frequently asked questions

What hourly rate should I put in?
It depends on the question you are asking. Base pay divided by working hours answers what the attendees are paid; that is the right figure for a conversation about workload. What the organisation spends is higher, because payroll taxes, benefits, equipment and floor space are all real, and finance teams typically load base pay by 25 to 40 per cent to reach it. That is the right figure for a conversation about budget. The overhead field exists so the choice is visible rather than buried in a constant — set it to zero and the rate you type is taken as the whole cost.
Why does the annual figure use 46 weeks and not 52?
Because no weekly slot in a real organisation runs 52 times. Public holidays remove some, annual leave thins the room for others, and any recurring meeting gets cancelled a handful of times a year. Forty-six is a deliberately conservative estimate that keeps the answer defensible in a conversation where someone will push back on it. The same reasoning gives 240 weekdays rather than 260, and eleven months rather than twelve. If your meeting genuinely never skips, the true figure is a little higher than what is shown.
Should I count preparation time?
Count it when it is real, and it usually is for anything with a document attached. A meeting that requires a pre-read has already consumed the reading time whether or not anyone did the reading. The other half is harder to price and easy to underestimate: leaving deep work to attend something and returning to it afterwards costs more than the calendar block suggests, which is why an afternoon with two meetings in it rarely produces two hours less work than an empty one. This tool asks for a number rather than inventing a multiplier, because the honest answer varies enormously by role.
Does a high cost mean the meeting was not worth it?
No, and it is worth being blunt about that, because a cost calculator invites the conclusion. Arithmetic can only reach one side of the ledger. A meeting that costs 400 and settles a contested decision that was blocking four people is cheap; a free one that ends with everyone unsure what was agreed is not. Use the figure to size the invite list and question the recurrence, which are decisions the number genuinely informs, rather than as a verdict on whether to meet at all.
Is anything I type sent anywhere?
No. Salaries are about as sensitive as internal data gets, so it is worth being specific: the rates and headcounts you enter stay in the page, the arithmetic runs in your browser, and nothing is transmitted to this site or anywhere else. There is no account, no save, and no history — closing the tab discards it. The one thing to be aware of is your own device, since a shared or unlocked screen shows whatever is still on it.

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