Meeting Cost Calculator
Calculate the true cost of meetings based on attendees, duration, and salaries.
Average gross annual salary per attendee
Disclaimer: The results provided by this calculator are estimates for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, tax, or legal advice. Tax laws vary by jurisdiction and change frequently. Please consult a qualified professional before making financial decisions.
How the per-minute rate is derived
The meeting cost calculator starts from the most widely used full-time working-hours baseline in the United States: 2,080 hours per year, which is 40 hours a week multiplied by 52 weeks. Dividing an annual salary by 2,080 yields an hourly rate; dividing again by 60 yields a per-minute rate. Multiplying that per-minute rate by the meeting duration and then by the number of attendees gives the raw labor cost. For a $120,000 salary, the math is $120,000 / 2,080 / 60 = about $0.96 per minute, so an hour of that person's time costs roughly $57.70 in direct wages before any overhead is considered.
The calculator intentionally keeps this model simple so the output is easy to reason about. It does not try to forecast the opportunity cost of work not being done, nor does it weight senior attendees more heavily for decision-making impact. If your team uses different assumptions — say, 1,880 billable hours for consultants or a 37.5-hour workweek in parts of Europe — you can get a more accurate meeting cost by scaling the salaries up or down proportionally before entering them, since the underlying arithmetic is linear in both salary and time.
When the number actually changes behavior
The dollar figure is a conversation starter more than a precise ledger entry. Its real value shows up when teams use it to question a default. A weekly one-hour status meeting with eight people earning an average of $110,000 costs roughly $450 per session, or about $23,000 annually. Teams that run the calculator on recurring meetings frequently discover that shortening by fifteen minutes, inviting only the two people who actually need to make decisions, or converting to an asynchronous document update saves more money than any tooling subscription the department bought that quarter.
Edge cases are worth noting. If a meeting has optional attendees who skim in and out, enter their share of time rather than the full duration. For contractors, use their billed rate rather than an imputed salary; for global teams, remember that total compensation including benefits, payroll taxes, equipment, and office space typically adds 25-40% on top of base salary, so the true fully loaded meeting cost is higher than the calculator shows. Use the number as a floor, not a ceiling, when deciding whether the meeting you are about to schedule is worth it.