See exactly how much your meeting costs in real-time. The cost ticks up live every second — a gentle reminder that time is money.
This meeting cost calculator turns the abstract "time is money" cliché into a number that ticks up in real time. Set how many people are in the room and their average annual salary, press start, and watch the live counter climb every fraction of a second so everyone can feel exactly what the discussion is burning.
It works out the cost from each attendee's hourly rate — annual salary divided by working hours per year — multiplied by the number of people and the elapsed time, then totals it across the whole group. People use it to:
Everything runs locally in your browser — the sliders, the live counter, and every calculation happen on your device. No salary figures, attendee counts, or timings are ever uploaded or stored, so the numbers you enter stay completely private.
The formula is (Annual Salary ÷ Working Hours per Year) × Number of Attendees × Elapsed Time in Hours. For example, 5 people at $80,000/year with 2,080 working hours costs $38.46/hour per person, so 5 people together cost $192.31/hour. The live counter updates that total every 100 milliseconds.
Each person's hourly rate is their salary divided by working hours per year. Multiply that rate by the number of attendees to get the cost per hour for the whole room, then multiply by how long the meeting runs. The tool does this continuously, which is why the number rises every fraction of a second instead of jumping at the end.
Beyond the salary figure on the counter, meetings carry context-switching costs, fragmented focus time, and the value of work that did not happen instead. The stats grid hints at this with figures like equivalent one-person work hours and how many emails could have been sent in the same time.
You can switch between USD, AUD, GBP, EUR, and CAD. The selected symbol is applied across the live counter, the per-minute and per-hour figures, and every stat box. The calculator does not convert between currencies — it simply displays your salary and costs in the symbol you choose.
For a more realistic total cost of employment, add 30 to 40% to base salary to account for employer taxes, benefits, and overhead. Simply enter an inflated salary figure — for example, if average salary is $80k, enter around $110k to reflect total employment cost.
The most effective levers are fewer attendees (only essential decision-makers), shorter duration (default to 25 or 50 minutes), async-first updates (replace status calls with a written or recorded summary), and always having a clear agenda — no agenda, no meeting.
Yes. Every calculation runs locally in your browser and nothing you enter is uploaded or saved. The numbers exist only for the current session, so closing or refreshing the page clears them completely.