About Meeting Cost Calculator

Meeting Cost Calculator helps teams understand the true cost of meetings and make data-driven decisions about time allocation.

Our Mission

We believe that transparency around meeting costs leads to better decisions. When teams understand that a weekly 1-hour meeting with 10 people costs $50K+ annually, they're more thoughtful about:

Who really needs to attend
How long meetings should be
Whether the meeting needs to happen at all
If async alternatives would work better

Why We Built This

After years of watching organizations struggle with "meeting bloat," we realized most teams lack visibility into their true meeting costs. Salary data is hidden, calculations are complex, and the cumulative impact isn't obvious.

We built Meeting Cost Calculator to make this data accessible. Our calculators include:

Direct salary costs (hourly rate x duration x attendees)
Overhead multiplier (1.4x for benefits, equipment, space)
Context switching costs (15 minutes per meeting)
Annual projections for recurring meetings

Our Approach

We're committed to:

Transparency: All calculations are shown clearly with assumptions stated
Privacy: No data is collected or stored. Calculations happen in your browser
Evidence-based: Our recommendations come from peer-reviewed research and industry data
Free forever: This tool will always be free. We monetize through ethical advertising

Quality and Editorial Policy

We maintain this site with a simple editorial policy: provide practical, transparent guidance that helps teams make better operational decisions. Content is periodically reviewed to ensure assumptions remain clear, examples stay relevant, and recommendations remain actionable for real-world team workflows.

Last policy review: February 2026
Primary audience: Team leads, operations leaders, and managers optimizing recurring meetings
Update trigger: We revise pages when benchmark assumptions or optimization practices need adjustment

Read the full Editorial Policy and see role accountability on our Authors page.

How We Handle Advertising

Advertising supports free access to the calculator. Ads do not influence benchmark assumptions, formulas, or recommendations. Product guidance is written independently from ad placement decisions.

Data Sources

Our salary averages and overhead multipliers come from:

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data
Industry salary surveys (Glassdoor, PayScale, LinkedIn)
Academic research on meeting costs and productivity
HR industry standards for overhead calculations

For detailed assumptions, model limits, and source policy, see our Methodology page.

Get in Touch

Have feedback or suggestions? We'd love to hear from you. Use our calculator and let us know how we can improve.