Meeting Cost Calculator
What a meeting costs in salaries while it is happening, and what a recurring one costs the business over a year.
- Free, no sign-up
- Runs in your browser, nothing is stored
- Formula and worked example included
Meeting Cost Calculator
Enter your figures to see results.
How much does a meeting cost?
An hour-long weekly meeting for eight people on an average £42,000 salary costs about £250 every time it happens and nearly £11,650 a year, once employer costs are included. That is 368 hours of paid time, or nearly 50 working days, spent in one meeting. Very few recurring meetings would survive being priced on the agenda.
How to use this calculator
- Enter how many people attend and their average salary. If pay varies a lot, use the salary of a typical attendee.
- Enter how long the meeting lasts and how often it happens.
- Tick "include employer costs" for the full cost to the business rather than salary alone.
What your result means
How to read the figure, what counts as normal, and what to do about it.
Why put a price on a meeting?
Nobody would approve a £11,650 purchase without asking what it was for. Recurring meetings sail through because nobody sees the invoice. Pricing them does not mean cancelling them all; the weekly meeting that keeps a project on track may be the best £250 the business spends. It means asking the same question of a meeting that you would ask of any other cost: what do we get for it, and is there a cheaper way to get the same thing?
Cheaper ways to get the same result
- Shorten it. A 60-minute meeting cut to 45 saves a quarter of the cost and usually loses nothing. Calendar defaults of 25 and 50 minutes work well.
- Shrink it. Send notes to the people who only need to know the outcome. Each person removed from an hour-long weekly meeting saves about £1,450 a year at an average salary.
- Replace the update meeting with a written update. Status can be read in two minutes; it takes fifteen to say aloud.
- Make it fortnightly. Half the cost, and the agenda is fuller.
- Give it an owner and a decision. A meeting that ends without a decision or an action was a conversation, and could have been an email.
A rough guide to what UK meetings cost
| Meeting | Cost per session | Cost per year |
|---|---|---|
| Daily 15-minute stand-up, 6 people on £38,000 | £43 | £9,900 |
| Weekly 1-hour team meeting, 8 people on £42,000 | £253 | £11,650 |
| Monthly 2-hour management meeting, 6 people on £75,000 | £678 | £8,100 |
| Weekly 30-minute one-to-one, 2 people on £50,000 | £38 | £1,730 |
All figures include employer costs at roughly 30% on top of salary.
Worked example: the Monday team meeting
Eight people on an average of £42,000 meet for an hour every week.
Hourly cost per person, including employer costs: 42,000 ÷ 1,725 × 1.3 = £31.65.
Per meeting: 31.65 × 8 = £253. Per year: 253 × 46 = £11,648, or 368 person-hours.
Cutting it to 45 minutes saves about £2,900 a year. Dropping two people who only listen saves another £2,900. Together, the same meeting for a third less money.
Frequently asked questions
Is the cost of a meeting a real cost?
The salaries are paid regardless, so cancelling a meeting does not put cash back in the bank. What it does is return the hours to work that earns money or moves the business forward, which is the same thing over time.
How many meetings are too many?
Surveys of UK office workers consistently put time in meetings at 10 to 15 hours a week, with around half rated as unproductive by the people attending. If your team is spending more than a fifth of its week in meetings, the total is worth pricing.
What about meetings with clients?
Price them too, and compare with the value of the work. A two-hour pitch costing £400 in staff time is cheap if it wins a £20,000 contract, and expensive if it is the fourth free consultation for someone who never buys.
The maths behind this calculator
For anyone who wants to check the working or rebuild it in a spreadsheet.
The formula
Hourly cost per person = Annual salary ÷ 1,725 productive hours × 1.3 (if employer costs included) Cost per meeting = Hourly cost × Attendees × Minutes ÷ 60 Cost per year = Cost per meeting × Meetings per year Meetings per year: daily 230, weekly 46, fortnightly 23, monthly 12
1,725 hours is a 37.5-hour week over 46 working weeks. The 1.3 loading approximates employer National Insurance, pension and overheads for a typical UK employee.
Assumptions and limits
- Everyone in the meeting is paid the average salary entered; in practice a senior attendee may cost several times a junior one.
- The cost is the time cost only. It does not include preparation, the interruption to work before and after, or the room.
- A one-off meeting shows a single cost; recurring meetings assume 46 working weeks a year.
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