Meeting Cost Calculator
That recurring meeting has a price tag: the salaries of everyone in the room, every time it runs. Add it up across a full year, and see what trimming it would give back.
- Free
- No sign-up
- Runs in your browser
How the number is worked out
- We turn each attendee’s salary into an hourly cost (annual ÷ 1,880 hours) and add up the room for the length of the meeting. That is the cost of one sitting.
- We multiply by how often it runs to get the yearly cost and the collective time it consumes across everyone.
- The last figure shows what you would save a year by trimming every occurrence by the minutes you set: the cheapest productivity win there is.
What we assume
- 1,880 working hours a year (≈ 47 weeks × 40 hours) to convert salary to an hourly rate.
- Salary is a floor: fully-loaded cost including on-costs and overhead runs higher, so real cost is above the figure shown.
- It counts time in the room only, not preparation, follow-ups or the context-switch either side.
- Fewer, shorter, smaller meetings is usually the fix, not automation.
Questions
- How do you calculate the cost of a meeting?
- Convert each attendee’s annual salary to an hourly rate (salary ÷ ~1,880 working hours), multiply by the meeting length, and sum across everyone in the room. A one-hour meeting with six people on HK$600,000 each costs roughly HK$1,900 in salary time alone, every single time it runs.
- Should I use salary or fully-loaded cost?
- Fully-loaded cost (salary plus on-costs, benefits and overhead) is more accurate and always higher. If you only have base salary, treat the result as a conservative floor; the true cost is meaningfully above it.
- What is the cheapest way to cut meeting cost?
- Trim the recurring ones. Cutting a standing weekly meeting from 60 to 45 minutes, or dropping two attendees who do not need to be there, compounds across the year: the tool shows exactly how much. Default to shorter, smaller and less frequent.
- How does this relate to automation?
- Many recurring meetings exist to chase status, reconcile numbers or share a report by hand, work that automation can deliver without a meeting at all. If yours is a standing update on data, our reporting automation calculator may be the better next stop.
A calculator gives you a number. A diagnostic gives you the path to it.
Bring the process you just modelled to a free 30-minute ROI diagnostic. We'll pressure-test the numbers against your real workflow and come back with a specific, quantified opportunity. No pitch, no obligation.
Book a free ROI diagnostic