Meeting cost calculator
See the real dollar cost of every meeting in seconds — no signup, no email gate.
- Direct payroll cost
- $450
- With opportunity cost (~2×)
- $900
The fully-loaded cost of a meeting is rarely visible on anyone's calendar. Salary, employer taxes, benefits, and the opportunity cost of pulling people away from focused work all compound — and most teams discover the bill only after the quarter closes. This calculator surfaces it before the invite goes out.
Inputs are intentionally minimal: the number of attendees, the average all-in hourly rate, and the meeting length. Multiply through and the result is the marginal dollar cost of holding the meeting versus not holding it. Use it as a decision-support nudge — anything above a small threshold deserves an agenda, anything above a larger one deserves async first.
Frequently asked questions
- What hourly rate should I use?
- Use the fully-loaded cost: gross salary plus benefits, payroll taxes, and overhead — typically 1.25–1.4× base pay. A $120k base salary is roughly $75/hr fully-loaded.
- Does this include opportunity cost?
- Only the direct payroll cost. Opportunity cost — the value of the focused work the meeting displaces — is usually 1–3× the direct cost on top, depending on the role.
- How accurate is it?
- It's a back-of-the-envelope estimate, not accounting. Use it for triage: is this meeting worth $200 or $2,000? The order of magnitude is the actionable signal.
Sources
- 1.U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Employer Costs for Employee Compensation
- 2.Harvard Business Review. Stop the Meeting Madness (Perlow, Hadley, Eun, 2017)