Productivity and technology investment · Free
Meeting cost calculator
Six people for an hour is six hours of work. See what a meeting costs, and leave the counter running during the next one.
Live counter
Guide
What a meeting costs
Meetings never show up on an invoice and weigh heavily on an office-based company: every minute is multiplied by the number of attendees, and recurring ones stay in the calendar even when nobody asks whether they're still needed.
Formula: cost = attendees × hourly cost × hours. Yearly cost = cost per meeting × times per week × 46 weeks.
Example: the weekly status meeting
Eight people with an average cost of €30/h, one hour every Monday: €240 per meeting and around €11,000 a year. That is 368 hours of work, more than two months of one full-time person.
If half the meeting is spent going over figures that already live in a system, an automatic report emailed every Monday can cut it to half an hour with fewer people.
Use the live counter
The counter adds up the cost in real time using the attendees and hourly cost you entered. Put it on screen at the start of your next meeting: it tends to keep things to the point.
How it works
- Enter the number of attendees and their average hourly cost.
- Enter the length and how many times a week it happens.
- Check the yearly cost, or start the live counter during the meeting.
Frequently asked questions
How do you calculate the cost of a meeting?
Attendees × hourly cost × length in hours. A one-hour meeting with 6 people at €35/h costs €210. Twice a week, that is over €19,000 a year.
What hourly cost should I use?
The cost to the company, not take-home pay: gross salary plus employer social security, divided by hours worked per year. You can work it out with our employee cost calculator.
Why 46 weeks a year?
Because we take out holidays and bank holidays. It approximates the weeks when recurring meetings actually happen.
How can we cut meeting costs?
Invite only people who decide or contribute, make 30 minutes the default length, prepare an agenda and replace status meetings with an automatic report.
Do you do this every day?
If you merge documents, prepare invoices or copy data between programs every day, that can be automated, and it's what we do.