Meeting Cost Calculator
What a meeting costs in the time of everyone in it, and what a weekly one costs in a year.
Good to know. A weekly hour with six people is about 300 hours a year. Worth checking the agenda earns it.
How it works
In plain words
Turn a yearly salary into pay per hour (salary ÷ 52 weeks ÷ hours a week), multiply by the number of people and the length in hours. For a repeating meeting, multiply by how often it happens in a year.
The formula
hourly = salary ÷ (52 × hours a week) cost = people × hourly × minutes ÷ 60 per year = cost × meetings a year
Worked example
Six people earning 70,000 a year, about 33.65 an hour each, meet for an hour: 201.92. Weekly, that is 10,500 a year and 312 hours of people’s time.
Sources
No outside data or rates: this is plain arithmetic.
4 automated tests check its answers on every change.
About the meeting cost calculator
Every meeting has a price that never shows up on an invoice: the paid time of everyone in the room. This calculator puts a number on it, from the number of people, their average pay and the length of the meeting.
Salaries are turned into an hourly rate over 52 weeks of the working hours you enter, 2,080 hours a year at 40 a week. That is pay alone. The full cost to an employer is higher, often by a quarter or more once taxes, pensions and benefits are added, and the work not done during the meeting is a cost too.
The yearly figure is where it adds up. A weekly one-hour meeting of six people takes over 300 hours a year; a daily fifteen-minute stand-up for ten people, about 650. That is not an argument against meeting: it is a reason to keep the list of people short, end early when the agenda is done, and cancel the ones that have outlived their purpose.
For hourly pay from a salary on its own, use the salary calculator; for overtime, the overtime pay calculator.
Questions people ask
How do I calculate the cost of a meeting?
Multiply the number of people by their average hourly pay and by the meeting’s length in hours. Six people at 33.65 an hour for an hour cost about 202.
How do I turn a salary into an hourly rate?
Divide it by 52 weeks and by the hours worked each week. 70,000 at 40 hours a week is about 33.65 an hour.
Should I include more than salary?
For the full cost to the business, yes: taxes and benefits often add a quarter or more on top of pay.