Timers & countdowns
Meeting cost calculator
Put a price on the hour. Enter who's in the room and their rate, hit start, and watch the running cost of the meeting climb in real time.
Cost assumes an average blended rate per attendee. A rough mirror to hold up in the next meeting that could have been an email.
How to use the meeting cost calculator
Enter the headcount
Count everyone actually in the room or on the call, including the people who are only listening.
Set an average rate
Use a fully loaded hourly cost rather than salary alone — benefits, employer taxes and overhead typically add 25 to 40 percent.
Start it when the meeting starts
The counter climbs in real time. Putting it on the shared screen is the whole trick; the number is far more persuasive when everyone can see it move.
Read the total
At the end you have the meeting's direct labour cost, which is a useful input to whether it should recur.
What a meeting actually costs
The arithmetic is uncomfortable and simple. Eight people at a fully loaded rate of £75 an hour costs £600 for an hour — and if it is a weekly standing meeting, that is over £30,000 a year for one recurring slot. Very few organisations would approve a £30,000 annual line item as casually as they add a weekly meeting.
Fully loaded cost is the right basis. Salary alone understates the real figure substantially once employer taxes, benefits, equipment and overhead are included; the usual multiplier is between 1.25 and 1.4. Using base salary makes meetings look cheaper than they are.
Direct cost is also only part of it. A meeting in the middle of someone's afternoon does not cost an hour of their time — it costs the hour plus the fragmentation on either side, because the two remaining 90-minute blocks are worth less than one three-hour block for anything that requires depth. Across time zones the cost is higher still, since someone is attending outside their working day.
None of which is an argument against meetings; it is an argument for pricing them. A £600 hour is easily worth it for a decision that unblocks a quarter, and obviously not worth it for a status update that could have been three paragraphs. Making the number visible is what lets a team tell the two apart.
When you'd reach for it
Auditing recurring meetings
Put an annual figure on a standing invite before deciding to keep it.
Live during a call
Share the ticking counter and watch the meeting get more focused.
Making the case for async
Compare the cost of a status meeting with the cost of writing an update.
Trimming the invite list
See what each additional attendee adds per hour.
Workshop budgeting
Cost a full-day session before committing a team to it.
Client-facing time
Understand the internal cost of time spent on an account.
Questions & answers
- How is the cost calculated?
- Attendees multiplied by the hourly rate, prorated to the exact elapsed time. So ten people at $75/hour burns $750 an hour, or about 21 cents every second.
- What rate should I use?
- A blended average fully-loaded cost per attendee works well. If salaries vary widely, pick a reasonable midpoint — the goal is a felt sense of the cost, not payroll accuracy.
- Can I start it at the top of a meeting?
- Yes. Press start as the meeting begins and let the figure climb live; pause or reset whenever you like.