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Enter how many people attend, their average annual salary, the meeting length and how often it repeats. The calculator converts salary to an hourly rate by dividing by 2,080 working hours, adds your benefits and overhead percentage for the fully loaded labor cost, and shows the cost per meeting, per attendee and per minute, plus the annualized cost of the recurring meeting. These are planning estimates, not payroll figures.
Every meeting buys a block of your team's time. The formula is: meeting cost = attendees × hourly rate × duration in hours × (1 + overhead).
Worked example: 8 people on a $100,000 average salary. The hourly rate is $100,000 / 2,080 = $48.08 per person, or $62.50 with 30% overhead. A one-hour meeting costs 8 × $62.50 = $500. Held weekly, that is $500 × 47 = $23,500 a year, for one recurring meeting. A live per-second timer ticking during a call is dramatic, but this calculator answers the planning question: what the meeting costs before you book it.
2,080 is the standard work year: 40 hours a week times 52 weeks, 2080 working hours in total. Dividing an annual salary by it turns pay into the hourly cost of that person's time, which is how the meeting math works. It ignores vacation and holidays, so it slightly understates the true hourly cost; using paid hours only would push every rate up a little.
A federal equivalent divisor of 2,087 is sometimes used to average over leap years, but 2,080 is the common private-sector convention for a salary to hourly rate calculation.
Salary is not the employer's full cost. Benefits, payroll taxes, insurance, equipment and office space typically add 20 to 45% on top of base salary, which is why this calculator defaults the benefits and overhead field to 30%.
Labor data puts total compensation near 1.4 times wages for many private-industry roles. If your finance team publishes a loaded rate, use that instead; otherwise 30% is the standard planning figure for a fully loaded meeting cost.
One meeting feels cheap; the same meeting every week is a budget line. This calculator annualizes across 47 working weeks, leaving room for holidays and leave.
At 30% overhead: a 30-minute sync with 4 people on $75,000 costs about $94 per meeting and $4,406 a year when held weekly; a 1-hour team meeting with 6 people on $90,000 costs about $338 per meeting and $15,863 a year; a 1-hour all-hands with 25 people on $100,000 costs about $1,563 per meeting and $73,438 a year. Recurring meetings are where the money hides, because no single instance ever feels expensive.
The calendar block is not the whole spend. Reading the pre-read, building the deck and writing up actions are paid time that exists only because the meeting does; leaving prep and follow-up out understates a typical meeting by a quarter to a half.
Research on workplace interruptions finds it takes roughly 20 minutes to fully refocus after one, and a meeting is a deliberate interruption for everyone invited. Add your own per-person prep estimate on top of the calculator's figure when the meeting needs real preparation.
Price every recurring meeting with this calculator, then work the list. Invite fewer people: every attendee adds their hourly rate, and decision quality usually falls past 7 or 8 people, so make attendance optional for the rest. Default to 15 or 30 minutes: halving a weekly meeting halves its annual cost.
Require a written agenda with a decision owner, which is the single biggest lever on overruns. Move status updates to async writing, and audit your recurring meetings quarterly, canceling or shortening the ones whose annual cost outweighs their value. Rerun the calculator after each change to confirm the saving.
This calculator prices the labor time a meeting consumes; it is a planning estimate, not a payroll figure or an invoice. It excludes the opportunity cost of the work not done during the meeting and the focus time lost getting back into deep work afterwards, so the true cost is higher, not lower.
Use it to decide whether a meeting is worth holding, who truly needs to attend, and when an async update would do the job instead.
Multiply the number of attendees by their average hourly rate and by the meeting length in hours. To get the hourly rate, divide the average annual salary by 2,080 working hours, then add an overhead percentage for benefits. A 6-person, 1-hour meeting at $75,000 average salary costs about $216 in salary alone.
2,080 is the standard work year: 40 hours per week times 52 weeks. It is the common convention for converting an annual salary into an hourly rate. It ignores vacation and holidays, so it slightly understates the true hourly cost.
The direct salary cost plus benefits, payroll taxes and overhead. This calculator applies your overhead percentage to the hourly rate; 30% is the default planning figure, and labor data suggests 20 to 45% brackets reality for most employers.
Start with 30%, the common planning figure. If your finance team publishes a loaded labor rate, use that instead; the field accepts any percentage up to 200%.
Multiply one meeting's total by how many times it runs per week, then by 47 working weeks. A $500 weekly meeting costs $23,500 a year. This calculator shows the annualized figure automatically.
The cost of one minute of the meeting: total cost divided by duration in minutes. A $500 one-hour meeting burns about $8.33 a minute. It is the figure that changes behavior in the room, because everyone can feel what a ten-minute overrun costs.
It depends on who attends. At a $75,000 average salary, a 6-person one-hour meeting costs about $216 in direct salary, or roughly $281 fully loaded at 30% overhead. Larger or more senior rooms pass $1,000 per hour quickly.
Invite only the people who truly need to be there, shorten the default length, require an agenda with a decision owner, move status updates to async writing, and audit recurring meetings quarterly. Every attendee and every minute has a price.
Cost rises linearly with headcount while decision quality usually falls past 7 or 8 people. Above that, make attendance optional and share notes instead.
Find percentages, percentage change and reverse percentages instantly.
Convert annual salary to hourly, weekly, monthly and biweekly pay, with overtime.
Turn your income goal into the hourly rate you must charge.
Time-and-a-half and double-time pay from your hourly rate.