Meeting Cost Calculator
Put a number on a recurring meeting. Enter how many people attend, an average hourly cost and how long it runs, and the page converts that into a total, a per-minute figure and a per-person share that is specific enough to change behaviour.
Three Layers of Cost
The base figure is easy: people multiplied by hourly rate multiplied by hours. What makes the number interesting is the two multipliers layered on top of it. The overhead multiplier accounts for the fact that an employee costs considerably more than their salary, and the opportunity cost multiplier accounts for the work those people are not doing while they sit in the room. Both are optional, and both are usually larger than people expect.
- The base labour cost is attendee count multiplied by the average hourly cost and by the duration in hours.
- The overhead multiplier has four settings: none, 25 percent, 50 percent and 100 percent. Salary is not the cost of an employee — benefits, payroll taxes, equipment and workspace all sit on top of it, and the higher settings reflect that.
- The opportunity cost multiplier has four settings: none, 20, 50 and 100 percent. This is the value of the work that would otherwise have been done, and it is the component most often left out of these calculations.
- The result is shown as a total, as a cost per minute and as a cost per person, because a per-minute figure is what makes a meeting that runs over feel like what it is.
Getting a Number You Can Present
- Count the attendees. Include anyone whose time is genuinely consumed, including people who only dial in for part of it — if they are there, they are not doing something else.
- Enter an average hourly cost. If you know fully loaded internal costs, use those, because that is what the overhead multiplier is modelling. If you only have salaries, divide the annual figure by roughly 2,000 working hours and let the overhead setting do the rest.
- Enter the duration in hours, using a decimal for part-hours. A 45-minute meeting is 0.75.
- Choose an overhead level. The 50 percent setting is a reasonable default for knowledge work in most markets once benefits, tax and workspace are counted.
- Choose an opportunity cost level if you want the figure to reflect displaced work. Start at 20 percent, which is deliberately conservative and still usually enough to make the point.
- Read the total and then the per-minute figure, which is the one that tends to get quoted in the next meeting invitation.
Two Calculations Worth Showing to a Team
The first is the default state of the page, and the second is a recurring meeting that most organisations have several of.
- Four people at 50 per hour for one hour gives a base cost of 200, and with no overhead and no opportunity cost the total is the same 200. That is 3.33 a minute and 50 per person.
- Eight people at 90 per hour for two hours gives a base of 1,440. With overhead at 50 percent the loaded cost is 2,160, and with opportunity cost at 50 percent that adds 720, for a total of 2,880.
- The same meeting works out at 24.00 a minute and 360.00 per person. Held weekly, that is roughly 149,760 a year.
- Note that the opportunity cost is calculated on the base figure rather than on the loaded one. That is a deliberate choice and a conservative one: it means the overhead percentage does not compound into the opportunity estimate, so the total is lower than a fully compounded model would give.
- The page also shows an equivalence line, which divides the total by a fixed reference of 5,000 per week. At 2,880 that reads as 0.58 weeks of one person's salary, which is a way of making the number concrete.
Other Ways to Put a Cost on Time
| Alternative | Notes |
|---|
| Cost per minute | The most effective for punctuality. A meeting that starts five minutes late has already spent a visible amount before anything is discussed, and quoting the per-minute figure changes how people treat the start time. |
| Annual cost of the recurring meeting | Multiply the per-meeting figure by the number of occurrences. A 30-minute weekly sync with six people is far more expensive over a year than the single figure suggests, and that is the comparison that gets meetings cancelled. |
| Cost of one unnecessary attendee | Divide the total by the attendee count to get the marginal saving. Often the practical question is not whether to hold the meeting but who needs to be in it, and this makes the answer obvious. |
| Fully loaded versus salary | If you only have salary figures, the result understates the true cost by the whole overhead percentage. Stating which basis you used matters more than the precision of the input, since a reader who assumes the wrong basis is easily an order of magnitude out. |
How to Use the Number Without Weaponising It
This calculation is persuasive, which is exactly why it is easy to misuse. It is an estimate of effort displaced, not an invoice, and treating it as the latter makes people defensive.
- Internal cost is not the same as money spent. A meeting does not transfer funds, it redirects attention. Framing the figure as money that has been spent invites an argument about accounting rather than about how the time is used.
- Recurring meetings are where the leverage is. A one-off hour is rarely the problem, but a weekly meeting that nobody has questioned for two years is a standing commitment of real value.
- Some meetings earn their cost. Decisions, disagreements resolved in person and onboarding all have value that does not appear in the calculation, and a meeting that prevents a week of misdirected work is cheap at almost any hourly rate.
- Use the number to justify shortening a meeting rather than cancelling it. Halving a recurring meeting's duration is usually easier to agree and delivers most of the saving.
- The overhead and opportunity settings are estimates, so present the result as a range rather than a precise figure. A number quoted to the cent invites scrutiny of the assumptions rather than discussion of the meeting.
Meeting Cost Questions
Should I use salary or fully loaded cost as the hourly rate?
Use whichever you are clear about, and say which one you used. If you enter a salary-derived hourly figure, the overhead multiplier should be raised to something like 50 percent to reflect benefits, tax and workspace. If you already have fully loaded internal rates, set overhead to none, because applying both would double-count the same costs and inflate the result.
What exactly is the opportunity cost percentage measuring?
It estimates the value of the best alternative use of that time, expressed as a share of the labour cost. Fifty percent means the work displaced was worth about half of what the meeting cost to hold. It is an assumption, not a measurement, and it is the component to be most careful about presenting as fact.
Why is the equivalence shown in weeks of salary?
Because a total in the thousands is abstract while weeks of a person's time is concrete. The page divides by a fixed internal reference of 5,000 per week, which corresponds to roughly 260,000 a year. If your average cost per person differs materially from that, the equivalence line will overstate or understate the effect, so read the raw total as the primary figure.
Is anything I enter stored or sent anywhere?
No. The calculation runs in the page and there is no submit action, which matters here more than usual because attendee counts and salary rates are sensitive internal figures. Nothing is transmitted, nothing is stored, and the fields reset when the page is reloaded.
Last verified: October 3, 2026
Launch Meeting Cost Calculator
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Maintained by Huang Bin · Last updated October 3, 2026