Meeting Cost Calculator
Calculate how much this meeting is costing your company — in real time
Assumes 2080 work hrs/year
What is the Meeting Cost Calculator?
Every meeting has a real dollar cost — it's just never displayed on the calendar invite. The Meeting Cost Calculator shows exactly how much a meeting costs based on the number of attendees, their average hourly compensation, and how long the meeting runs. It's popular with managers, operations teams, and anyone who has ever sat through an hour-long meeting that could have been a Slack message. Some companies use it to build awareness around meeting culture. Some people use it to make a point to their boss. Either way, the number is usually more than people expect.
How Does It Work?
The calculator multiplies the collective hourly cost of all attendees by the meeting duration.
Meeting Cost = Number of Attendees × Average Hourly Rate × Meeting Duration (hours)
Number of Attendees is the total headcount in the meeting. Average Hourly Rate is the mean hourly compensation across all attendees — you can estimate this from average salaries. Meeting Duration is the length in hours or fractions. For a fully loaded cost, multiply the result by 1.25 to 1.4 to account for benefits and overhead.
How to Use CalciHub's Meeting Cost Calculator
1. Enter the number of people attending the meeting.
2. Enter the average hourly salary or compensation (or use a blended estimate).
3. Set the meeting duration in minutes or hours.
4. Optional: toggle on overhead multiplier to see fully loaded cost.
5. See total meeting cost instantly.
6. Tip: For a recurring meeting (weekly 1-hour with 8 people), run the annual cost calculation. The annual number tends to be the one that actually prompts change.
A Quick Example
A product team at a mid-size tech company in New York holds a weekly Monday status meeting. Twelve attendees, average salary of $115,000/year (≈ $55/hour). The meeting runs 90 minutes.
Meeting cost: 12 × $55 × 1.5 hours = $990 per meeting.
That same meeting, 52 weeks a year: $51,480 annually.
Whether that's worth it depends on what gets decided in the meeting. The calculator doesn't judge — it just shows the number. What you do with it is up to you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Divide the annual salary by 2,080 — the standard number of working hours in a year (52 weeks × 40 hours). So a $90,000 salary works out to roughly $43 per hour. For a group with mixed seniority, average the hourly rates of all attendees, or use a reasonable blended estimate for the team level.