What does this meeting really cost?
Add up the people, their pay and the minutes, and see what one meeting, or a year of them, costs your team.
What this meeting costs
Each time it meets
$537
8 people, 9.3 person-hours
Per year (46 a year)
$24,687
429 person-hours, about 11 full working weeks
Per minute
$7.67
Per hour
$460
What you could save each year
- $5,290 by cutting 15 minutes
- $3,086 per person who reads the notes instead
- $24,687 if a written update replaces it
Live meeting meter
Start it when the meeting starts. It uses the people above.
$0.00
00:00 elapsed
Everything is calculated in your browser. Nothing you enter is stored or sent anywhere.
How the meeting cost calculator works
A meeting costs the hourly cost of everyone in it, for as long as it runs, plus the time it takes each person to get in and out of it. A one-hour weekly meeting with eight people at $50 an hour costs $400 each time and $18,400 a year. That is 368 person-hours, more than nine full working weeks, spent in one recurring calendar slot.
The calculator above works that out for any mix of roles and pay, for one meeting or a recurring one, and shows what you would save by making it shorter, smaller or written.
Hourly cost from a salary
yearly salary × employer cost factor ÷ paid hours per year
Cost per hour of the meeting
sum over groups of people × hourly cost
Cost per meeting
cost per hour × (length + prep and switching time) ÷ 60
Cost per year
cost per meeting × meetings per year
How to use the calculator well
- Group people by pay, not by name. “Engineers”, “managers” and “director” are enough. An average per group is accurate enough to decide anything a meeting cost is used for.
- Use what people cost, not what they take home. Enter hourly cost including employer taxes and benefits, or enter salaries and let the employer cost factor add them. The default factor of 1.4 matches the US private-sector average: wages and salaries were 70.0% of employer compensation costs in June 2026 (US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employer Costs for Employee Compensation).
- Count the time around the meeting. The prep and switching field adds the same minutes for each attendee. It defaults to 10. Leave it there if people read an agenda first; set it to 0 to count the meeting alone.
- Pick how often it meets. A meeting that looks cheap once often is not cheap once a week.
How many meetings a year
Recurring meetings use 46 working weeks by default, which leaves room for holidays and public holidays. Change it in the calculator if your year looks different.
| Recurrence | Meetings a year | Rule |
|---|---|---|
| Daily | 230 | 5 working days × 46 weeks |
| Weekly | 46 | one per working week |
| Every 2 weeks | 23 | 46 ÷ 2 |
| Monthly | 12 | one a month, holidays or not |
Worked examples
| Meeting | Inputs | Per meeting | Per year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Weekly team meeting | 8 people at $50 an hour, 60 minutes, no prep time | $400 | $18,400 and 368 person-hours |
| Daily standup | 6 people at €45 an hour, 15 minutes, no prep time | €67.50 | €15,525 and 345 person-hours |
| The same standup with 5 minutes of switching each | 6 people at €45 an hour, 15 + 5 minutes | €90 | €20,700 and 460 person-hours |
| Monthly all-hands | 120 people at $60 an hour, 45 minutes, no prep time | $5,400 | $64,800 and 1,080 person-hours |
The two standup rows show why switching time matters most for short meetings: five minutes on each side of a fifteen-minute call adds a third to its cost.
Three ways to make a meeting cheaper
- Make it shorter. Cutting 15 minutes from the weekly team meeting above saves $4,600 a year. Most calendars default to 30 or 60 minutes; the agenda rarely does.
- Make it smaller. Each person who reads the notes instead of attending saves their share. Keep the people who decide or do the work; send everyone else the outcome.
- Make it written. Status meetings are the easiest to replace, because their job is to share what got done. A weekly status report does that in minutes, and async work only holds up when progress is visible. Keep the meeting for decisions and disagreements.
What the number leaves out
- The value of the outcome. A meeting can be expensive and still the cheapest way to settle something.
- Fragmented days. A meeting in the middle of a morning can cost more focus than its length suggests. The switching field covers some of that, not all.
- Follow-up work. Notes, action items and the meetings a meeting creates are not in the total.
For what a person’s hour is worth in the first place, use the time value calculator.
Written and maintained by the DoneThat team. The formulas match the calculator code, and the BLS figure was last checked against its source on 2 November 2026.
Frequently asked questions
How do you calculate the cost of a meeting?
Add up the hourly cost of everyone in the room, then multiply by the length of the meeting in hours. Eight people at $50 an hour in a one-hour meeting cost $400. For a recurring meeting, multiply by the number of times it meets in a year.
Should I use salary or hourly cost?
Either works. Hourly cost is simpler if you know it. If you only know salaries, the calculator divides salary times the employer cost factor by paid hours per year, so a $90,000 salary with a factor of 1.4 and 1,840 hours comes to about $68.48 an hour.
What is the employer cost factor?
What an employer pays on top of salary: payroll taxes, health insurance, pension and paid leave. In US private industry, wages and salaries were 70.0% of employer compensation costs in June 2026, which is a factor of about 1.43. Rates elsewhere differ, so use your own if you know it.
Why count prep and switching time?
Because nobody goes from deep work to a meeting and back at no cost. Reading the agenda, joining, and getting back into the work all take time, and for short meetings that overhead can be a large share of the total. Set it to 0 if you only want the meeting itself.
Is a meeting's cost the same as its waste?
No. The calculator shows what a meeting costs, not whether it is worth it. A decision that unblocks a team for a month can be cheap at any price. Use the number to ask whether this meeting needs this many people for this long.
Does the calculator store what I enter?
No. Everything is calculated in your browser, and nothing you type, including role names and pay, is stored or sent anywhere.
Swap the status meeting for a summary
DoneThat captures what you get done, automatically and privately, so nobody needs a meeting to find out.