Free calculator
Meeting cost calculator: what that meeting really costs.
Add who's in the room and roughly what they earn, how long the meeting runs and how often. You get the cost per meeting, per month and per year, the engineering time it takes, and a live ticker that floats on top of your screen share, so the whole call watches the meeting cost climb.
RoleSalary / yearPeople
The salaries are rough US numbers we picked as a starting point, not data. Type in your own. Annual base pay, in US dollars.
The meeting doesn't end when the call does. Add the time it takes to get back into the code, if you want to count it.
The overhead multiplier covers benefits, payroll taxes, equipment and office: 1.25 to 1.4 is common. Hourly cost is salary × overhead ÷ 2,080 hours. A year here is 240 working days or 48 working weeks, after holidays and time off.
Each meeting costs
$441
8 people at $881 an hour for the room.
$1,763
a month
$21,150
a year
192
person-hours a year
24
working days a year
That's about 4.8 weeks of one engineer's time every year.
Live meeting ticker
$0.00
00:00 · 8 people · $14.69 a minute
Open it in its own window and share just that window from the call. In Chrome or Edge on a desktop, it can also float on top of everything you share.
What a team's usual meetings cost in a year
Everyone at $176,250 a year, the average of your attendees above, × 1.3 overhead.
| Meeting | Setup | Each time | A year | Hours a year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Daily standupOften runs to 25 minutes in practice | 15 min · 8 people · every working day | $220 | $52,875 | 480 |
| Sprint planningTwo-week sprints | 90 min · 8 people · every 2 weeks | $1,322 | $31,725 | 288 |
| Backlog refinement | 60 min · 8 people · weekly | $881 | $42,300 | 384 |
| Retro | 60 min · 8 people · every 2 weeks | $881 | $21,150 | 192 |
| Sprint demoTeam plus stakeholders | 45 min · 12 people · every 2 weeks | $991 | $23,794 | 216 |
| Weekly 1:1Per report | 30 min · 2 people · weekly | $110 | $5,288 | 48 |
| Architecture review | 60 min · 6 people · weekly | $661 | $31,725 | 288 |
| Engineering all-handsA 60-person org | 60 min · 60 people · monthly | $6,609 | $79,313 | 720 |
How the cost of a meeting is worked out.
Each person's hourly cost is their annual salary × overhead ÷ 2,080, the paid hours in a 40-hour, 52-week year. The overhead multiplier adds what the company pays on top of salary: health insurance, retirement contributions, payroll taxes, a laptop, office space. Add up everyone in the room and multiply by the length of the meeting.
For recurring meetings the calculator assumes 240 working days and 48 working weeks a year, which leaves room for public holidays and vacation. A biweekly meeting happens 24 times, a monthly one 12.
The role salaries are rough US numbers we chose as a starting point, not survey data. Pay varies by city, company size and level, and equity can be a large part of it. Type in your own numbers, or ask your finance team for a fully loaded hourly rate and use one average salary.
The money is only part of it. For engineers, the bigger cost is often the focus a meeting breaks. A 30-minute call at 2 PM turns an afternoon into two short blocks, and neither is long enough to debug something hard. The refocus option adds that time if you want to count it.
How to cut meeting cost on an engineering team.
Most of a team's meeting cost is in a handful of recurring meetings. These changes are small, and each one comes with an example you can copy.
Shorter defaults
Calendars default to 30 and 60 minutes, and meetings expand to fill them. Set your calendar to 25 and 50 minutes so people get a break between calls, and book 15 minutes when a decision is all you need.
Example: A weekly 60-minute sync with 8 people cut to 45 minutes saves 96 person-hours a year.
Async status updates
If a meeting is people reading out what they did, it can be a written update. Post it in a Slack thread or a standup bot by 10 AM local time, and meet only when something is blocked.
Example: Async standup on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, live on Tuesday and Thursday, cuts standup time by 60%.
No-meeting days
Pick one day or two afternoons a week with no recurring meetings for the whole team. It only works if the managers and the product people keep it too.
Example: No meetings on Wednesday, and every recurring meeting that was on Wednesday moves or ends.
Maker's and manager's schedules
Managers work in hour-long slots. Engineers need half days of unbroken time to hold a hard problem in their head, and one meeting in the middle of an afternoon breaks it into two short pieces. Batch meetings next to lunch or at the start or end of the day.
Example: All the team's rituals on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, before noon in the earliest time zone.
Fewer people in the room
Every extra attendee adds their full hourly cost. Invite the people who need to decide or do the work, and send everyone else the notes. Optional attendees should feel free to decline.
Example: Sprint demo for the team and the two stakeholders who'll use it, recorded for everyone else.
A recurring meeting review
Recurring meetings are where most of the cost hides, because nobody decides to keep them each week. Once a quarter, list them all with their yearly cost and ask the team which to drop, shorten or make less frequent.
Example: Weekly architecture review becomes every two weeks, with an async RFC process for the rest.
Before you cut a meeting, write down what it was for.
Some meetings are cheap for what they do. A retro that catches a broken deploy process, or a planning session that stops two people building the same thing, pays for itself many times over. The goal isn't zero meetings: it's that every recurring meeting has an owner, a purpose and a written outcome.
A team charter is a good place to agree this once: which rituals you hold, how long they run, which days stay meeting-free, and what happens async instead. The team charter template builds one for you, including the hours your time zones share. When you plan the next sprint, the sprint capacity calculator shows how much time is left after meetings and time off. And when the meeting does happen, the meeting timer floats over your screen share with a time for every agenda item, so it ends when it should.
The most expensive meeting is the one half the team misses.
Planning with two people on vacation means planning it twice. Forgot shows the whole team's time off, holidays and on-call on one board, so you book rituals on days people are actually in.
Try it free for 14 daysQuestions
How do you calculate the cost of a meeting?
For each person, take their annual salary, multiply it by an overhead factor for benefits and taxes (1.3 is a common default), and divide by 2,080 paid hours to get an hourly cost. Add everyone's hourly cost together and multiply by the length of the meeting in hours. For a recurring meeting, multiply by how many times it happens a year.
How much does a meeting cost?
It depends on who's in it. Eight engineers at an average of $170,000 a year cost about $850 an hour with a 1.3 overhead, so a 30-minute meeting is about $425. A daily 15-minute standup with the same team is about $51,000 a year. These salaries are examples: use your own numbers.
What overhead multiplier should I use?
Somewhere between 1.25 and 1.4 is common for salaried employees in the US, covering benefits, payroll taxes, equipment and office costs. Your finance team can give you the real figure for your company. If you only want salary cost, set it to 1.
How much does a daily standup cost?
A 15-minute standup with eight people takes two person-hours a day, or about 480 person-hours a year: 60 working days. At typical engineering salaries that's tens of thousands of dollars a year, and more if it regularly runs over.
Can I show the running cost during a Zoom, Google Meet or Teams call?
Yes. Start the live ticker and press Pop out: in Chrome or Edge on a desktop it becomes a small floating window that stays on top of whatever you share, and you can drag it anywhere on the screen. In other browsers, open the ticker in its own window and share just that window from the call. Either way the whole call watches the dollars climb in real time.
How do you reduce meeting costs?
Make 25 and 50 minutes the default length, invite only the people who need to decide, move status updates to a written async format, protect meeting-free days or afternoons for engineers, and review every recurring meeting each quarter. Cutting one recurring meeting usually saves more than shortening ten one-offs.