Meeting Cost Calculator — Live Ticker

What Is a Meeting Cost Calculator?

A meeting cost calculator turns meeting time into dollars. Enter the number of attendees and their average compensation, press start, and watch a live ticker count up the real cost of the meeting as it happens — down to the cent. It is the fastest way to answer a question most teams never ask: was that meeting worth what we just paid for it?

The math is simple but eye-opening. Six people earning an average of $100,000 per year cost roughly $4.80 per minute of meeting time once you include overhead — about $290 for a single hour. Make that meeting a weekly recurring event and you have committed more than $15,000 a year of payroll to one calendar slot.

How the Calculation Works

The calculator converts each attendee's annual salary into an hourly rate using the standard 2,080 working hours per year (40 hours per week × 52 weeks). If your team is paid hourly, you can enter the hourly rate directly instead. The per-person rate is multiplied by the number of attendees and by the elapsed time to produce the running total.

The Overhead Multiplier

Salary is only part of what an employee costs. Payroll taxes, health insurance, retirement contributions, software licenses, and office space typically add 25–40% on top of base pay. The optional overhead toggle applies a ~30% multiplier so the ticker reflects the fully loaded cost of everyone in the room rather than just their take-home pay.

Why Track Meeting Costs?

Meetings are the single largest unexamined expense in most organizations. Studies have estimated that unnecessary meetings cost large companies upwards of $100 million per year, and the average professional spends a third of their working week in meetings. A live cost ticker makes that spend tangible and encourages better habits:

• Trim the invite list — every extra attendee raises the per-minute burn rate
• Set shorter default durations — 25 minutes instead of 30, 50 instead of 60
• Audit recurring meetings — the weekly-for-a-year figure shows their true annual cost
• Replace status meetings with async updates when the cost outweighs the value
• Start on time — ten people waiting five minutes is real money lost

Free, Private, and Browser-Based

This meeting cost calculator is completely free and runs entirely in your browser. The salaries and attendee counts you enter are never sent to a server, stored, or shared — they exist only on your screen and disappear when you close the tab. There is no signup, no install, and no spreadsheet required.

Use it live during your next meeting, or use the plan-ahead view to estimate the cost of a 15-minute standup, a 30-minute sync, or an hour-long review before you ever send the invite. You can also copy a one-line summary to share the result with your team.