How much does a meeting cost?

A meeting costs the combined hourly pay of everyone in the room for the time it runs. For example, eight people earning an average of $150,000 a year in a one-hour meeting costs roughly $580 in salary alone, before the hidden cost of context switching. Held weekly, that single meeting runs about $30,000 a year.

How do you calculate the cost of a meeting?

Convert each attendee's salary to an hourly rate by dividing the annual figure by about 2,080 working hours. Multiply that by the number of attendees and by the meeting length in hours. To annualize a recurring meeting, multiply the per-meeting cost by how many times it happens per year.

Why calculate meeting cost?

Putting a dollar figure on a meeting makes its real cost visible and forces a simple question: is this meeting worth more than what it costs. It is one of the fastest ways to justify trimming an attendee list, shortening a recurring sync, or replacing a status meeting with a written update.

Meeting Cost Calculator

Put a number on it. Enter who is in the room, what they earn, how long it runs, and how often, and see what the meeting actually costs per session and across a year. Everything saves in your browser. No signup.

Attendees

Pay basis

Average annual salary ($)

Meeting length (minutes)

Meetings per week

Cost per meeting

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Annualized cost

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How to use the meeting cost calculator

The cost of a meeting is the simplest math in program management and the most ignored. Take everyone's salary, convert it to an hourly rate, multiply by the number of people and the hours the meeting runs, and you have the bill. This tool does it live, then annualizes any recurring meeting so the real number is impossible to look away from.

The point is not to ban meetings, it is to make the trade-off visible. A weekly all-hands that costs thirty thousand dollars a year might be the best money the team spends, or it might be a status update that should have been a written note. Once the cost is on the table, the conversation about whether the meeting earns it gets a lot easier.

Ways to cut the bill

Trim the invite list. Cost scales linearly with attendees, so the cheapest fix is fewer people in the room.
Shorten the default. Half of a standing hour is often enough once people know the clock is real.
Replace status meetings with written updates. A status report reaches more people for a fraction of the cost.
Question the cadence. A weekly that could be biweekly halves the annual number instantly.

For more on running a lean operating rhythm, see the Insights.

Built by Arsenii Samoilov, a Senior Technical Program Manager with 19+ years at Intuit, Atlassian, Adobe, Salesforce, Roku, and Apple. If your team needs help standing up program governance, get in touch.

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