See the real cost of a meeting in real time. Is it worth it?
Meetings are one of the largest hidden costs in organizations. A one-hour meeting with 8 people who earn $50/hour costs $400 in direct labor — and that doesn't account for the opportunity cost of what those people could have been building instead.
Studies consistently show that unnecessary meetings are the top productivity complaint among knowledge workers. Shopify famously calculated that a 30-minute meeting with 3 people doesn't cost 30 minutes — it costs 90 minutes of productive time, plus context-switching overhead before and after.
This tool makes the cost visible in real time as you add attendees and set the duration. Sharing the output with your team before scheduling can help justify whether a meeting is worth it, encourage shorter meetings, reduce attendee lists, and shift more communication to async channels like Slack or email.
This tool in other languages:
Français:
Calculateur du coût des réunions
Español:
Calculadora de costo de reuniones
Deutsch:
Meeting-Kosten-Rechner
Português:
Calculadora de custo de reunião
日本語:
会議コスト計算ツール
中文:
会议成本计算器
한국어:
회의 비용 계산기
العربية:
حاسبة تكلفة الاجتماعات
Add each attendee with their hourly rate, set the meeting duration in minutes, and the total cost updates live. Click + Add attendee for larger meetings. Copy the report for sharing or post-meeting justification.
Divide annual salary by 2,080 (40 hours × 52 weeks) for a rough hourly cost. For fully-loaded cost (including benefits, taxes, overhead), multiply by 1.25 to 1.4. A $120k/year engineer costs ~$58/hour in raw salary but ~$75-82/hour fully loaded — use fully loaded for honest meeting-cost estimates.
A one-hour meeting with eight mid-level engineers can easily cost $800-1,200 in salary-equivalent time. Many meetings that cost this much produce nothing that couldn't have been a document or Slack thread. Seeing the number often changes behavior — attendees leave meetings that don't need them, organizers tighten agendas.
This calculator counts only the meeting itself. In reality, meetings fragment focused work time — a 30-minute meeting in the middle of a two-hour coding block often costs closer to 90 minutes of productive output. For rough true-cost estimates, multiply the calculator's number by 1.3-1.5x.
Invite fewer people (smaller meetings move faster). Set a strict time limit (15-30 minutes instead of 60). Send a pre-read so everyone arrives prepped. End as soon as the goal is met. Skip the meeting entirely when a document, async update, or quick Slack thread would work. These four habits together typically halve meeting costs.