Cost Of
Cost of a recurring meeting
Attendees × hourly cost × minutes × how often it happens. Scaled to a year.
What a recurring meeting really costs
A meeting's price is not the hour on the calendar — it is that hour multiplied by everyone in the room, by how often it repeats, and by what each of those people costs their employer per hour. A weekly one-hour meeting with ten people consumes 480 people-hours a year, roughly a quarter of a full-time role, on one calendar entry that nobody re-approves.
This calculator prices any recurring meeting: standup, weekly sync, sprint review, the all-hands. Give it the attendees, the length and the frequency, and it returns the annual cost with every step shown, plus what you would keep by dropping an attendee, cutting five minutes, or moving it to every second week.
How the number is built
- Hourly cost
- annual gross salary × fully-loaded multiplier ÷ working hours per year (default ×1.3 and 1,920 hours, both editable).
- Per meeting
- attendees × hourly cost × minutes ÷ 60. Switching overhead, if you turn it on, adds the minutes each attendee loses getting back to work afterwards.
- Per year
- × occurrences. Weekly is 48 by default, every workday is 5 × 48 = 240, every second week is 24, monthly is 12 — the working year is editable.
- What you can change
- attendees, duration, frequency, overhead, the country and role preset, the salary itself, the multiplier and the working year.
When to use it
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Before you add a recurring invite
Price it for a year first. A 30-minute weekly meeting with eight people is a real budget decision, not a calendar decision.
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Trimming the invite list
The receipt shows what each attendee costs per year. Two people moving from required to optional is usually the easiest saving in the room.
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Defending a meeting that is worth it
Some meetings earn their price several times over. Knowing the number is the strongest way to say so — and to protect it from the next round of calendar cuts.
Questions
How is the cost of a meeting calculated?
Attendees × hourly employer cost × duration, multiplied by how many times the meeting happens in a year. Hourly employer cost is annual gross salary × a fully-loaded multiplier (default 1.3, covering employer taxes, benefits and equipment) ÷ working hours per year (default 1,920).
Should I include preparation and follow-up time?
Turn on switching overhead and give it the minutes each attendee loses returning to focused work — the research figure is around 23 minutes, but 10 to 15 is a conservative choice for a routine meeting. Preparation time is not counted separately; if it is significant, add it to the duration.
Which salary should I use?
The median for the room. Pick a country and role preset, or type the average gross salary of the people who actually attend. If attendees are senior, the preset will understate the cost.
Is the number the money we would get back?
No. Cancelling a meeting frees hours, not cash — the value shows up as work those people do instead. Treat the total as the size of the bet you are making on that hour.
Can I share the result?
Yes. The link contains every input, so the person who opens it sees your meeting with your numbers, and can change the attendee count to make their own case.