Meeting Cost Calculator

Meeting Cost Calculator puts a price on the time people spend in a room or on a call. Add each role once, with how many people and their average pay, either yearly or hourly, then choose the length. You immediately see the cost of one meeting, the cost of every minute and hour, and the people-hours it uses. Choose how often it repeats and the calculator works out the yearly bill and how much a meeting fifteen minutes shorter would save.

Salaries are turned into an hourly cost with two settings you control: working hours a year (1,800 by default, roughly a full-time job after holidays) and an overhead multiplier for what an employer pays on top of salary, such as payroll tax, pension contributions, equipment and office space. Contractor rates are used as typed, because they normally cover their own costs.

When the meeting starts, press Start on the live meter. A large glowing number counts the money as the minutes pass and turns red once you run past the planned length. It reads the real clock, so it stays accurate in a background tab, and it survives a page reload. Your set-up stays in this browser only and is never uploaded.

1. Under “Who is in the room”, edit the example rows or press “Add a role”. Type the number of people, the pay each, and pick year or hour.
2. Set “Length in minutes”, or tap 15 min, 30 min, 45 min, 1 hour or 90 min, and choose how often it “Repeats”.
3. Open “Currency, working hours and overheads” to change the currency or the two cost settings.
4. Read the cost, per minute, per hour, people-hours and yearly total. Press “Copy summary” to paste it into a chat or an agenda.
5. At the meeting, press Start on the live meter. Use Pause for breaks and Reset afterwards.

• Any number of roles, each with a head count and yearly or hourly pay.
• Hourly cost shown beside every role, so you can sense-check the numbers.
• Adjustable working hours a year and an overhead multiplier applied to salaries.
• Cost per meeting, per minute and per hour, plus people-hours.
• Repeat options from every working day to quarterly, with the yearly cost and the saving from a 15-minute cut.
• Live meter based on real clock time: accurate in background tabs, with pause, resume and an over-time warning.
• The running total appears in the browser tab title while you are in another tab.
• Thirty currencies, defaulting to the one your browser’s region suggests.
• A plain-text summary to copy, and your last set-up remembered in this browser.

• Use typical pay for a role rather than anyone’s real salary. The point is the size of the number, not accounting precision.
• Recurring meetings are where the money hides. A weekly hour for eight people often costs more in a year than a new laptop for each of them.
• Put the per-minute figure on the agenda. People are quicker to wrap up when they can see a minute is worth more than a coffee.
• Remember the hidden cost: switching back to deep work after a meeting takes time too, so the real cost is higher than shown.
• If you set the overhead multiplier to 1, the result is pure salary cost, handy when comparing with a contractor quote.