Meeting Cost Calculator
See the real cost of meetings in real-time. Add attendees and hourly rates to understand how much each minute costs. Includes live timer for ongoing meetings.
This meeting has cost
£55.00
1h 0m | £0.92/min | 2 attendees
Attendees & Rates
Avg: £27.50/hrCost Breakdown
Person 1
£30.00/hour
£30.00
Person 2
£25.00/hour
£25.00
Per Person
£27.50
Per Minute
£0.92
Per Hour
£55.00
💡 Meeting Tips:
- Have an agenda — every minute wasted costs real money
- Keep meetings short: 30 mins is often better than 60
- Invite only essential attendees
- Can this be an email instead?
What Meetings Actually Cost Your Business
Plug five people on £30 to £60 hourly rates into a one-hour meeting and the bill is rarely under £200. A weekly recurring 'standup' with eight people at one hour each runs to roughly £10,000 a year. The figure feels jarring because most of us never see meeting time as a cash line item, but it sits on the salary cost ledger every single week regardless of what gets decided in the room.
The hourly rate to plug in is not just gross salary divided by working hours. A loaded cost (salary plus employer NI, pension, software licences, office overhead) typically runs 1.3 to 1.5 times base salary. So a £40,000 employee actually costs around £52,000 to £60,000 a year, which means an hourly rate of roughly £28 to £33 for a 37.5-hour week, not £20. Use the loaded figure if you want the meeting bill to reflect reality.
Recurring Meeting Cost Examples (Annualised)
| Meeting Setup | Per Session | 52 Sessions/Year |
|---|---|---|
| 4 people, £30/hr, 30 min | £60 | £3,120 |
| 6 people, £40/hr, 1 hour | £240 | £12,480 |
| 8 people, £50/hr, 1 hour | £400 | £20,800 |
| 12 people, £45/hr, 1.5 hours | £810 | £42,120 |
| 3 senior people, £80/hr, 2 hours | £480 | £24,960 |
Using the Live Timer to Run Disciplined Meetings
The live timer mode is the lever this tool exists for. Project the running cost on the screen at the start of a meeting and watch behaviour change inside three minutes. People stop telling stories that are not on the agenda, late arrivals stop apologising at length, and the chair becomes more willing to cut a tangent off because the cost of not cutting it is visible in pounds, not vague feelings.
A reasonable rule that emerges from this tool: any decision-making meeting should produce a written outcome (a decision, a delegated action, a date) for every £100 of cost. A status meeting that runs to £400 with no documented outcome was a £400 chat. Status updates work better as written notes circulated before the meeting, with the meeting itself reserved for genuine debate.
Smaller Rooms, Shorter Slots, Async-First
The cheapest way to cut meeting cost is to invite fewer people. A six-person meeting that becomes four halves the cost. Not every team member needs to be in every meeting; circulate notes afterwards rather than pre-loading the room. Default slots of 30 minutes (rather than the calendar's automatic 60) save half the bill on any meeting that does not need the full hour, and most do not.
For decisions that do not need real-time discussion, written async kills the meeting entirely. A Loom video plus a comment thread on a shared doc can replace a 45-minute review meeting that costs £300 of salary time. The general framework: real-time meetings for genuine debate or sensitive conversations, written async for status, decisions with clear options, and any update where one person is presenting and others are listening.
Frequently Asked Questions
What hourly rate should I use for staff in this calculator?
Use a fully loaded rate that includes employer NI (15% in the UK from April 2026), pension contributions (typically 3 to 5% employer), and a share of overhead. As a shortcut, multiply gross salary by around 1.4 and divide by the annual hours worked (typically 1,950 for a 37.5-hour week). A £40,000 employee comes out to roughly £29 per hour loaded.
Does the timer keep running if I close my browser?
No, the timer is purely client-side and runs only while the tab is open. If you reload the page or close the tab, the timer resets. This is intentional; the tool is meant for live meetings rather than long-term tracking. For longer cost analysis, use the manual minutes input instead of the running timer.
Should I include my own time as a manager in the cost?
Yes, especially if you are running the meeting. A manager on a £70,000 salary costs around £50 per hour loaded; chairing a five-person hour-long meeting where you are also an attendee is a £250 line item that often gets forgotten because it does not show up on a separate timesheet. Include yourself for an honest figure.
How do I justify this cost to my team without making it awkward?
Frame it as respecting people's time, not policing it. Phrases that work: 'so we know what this is worth', 'so we can decide if this needs everyone', 'so we can spot the meetings that have stopped earning their keep'. The aim is fewer better meetings, not constant cost-shaming. Most teams quietly welcome the rigour because their calendars are equally full of meetings they suspect are wasteful.
What is a reasonable meeting cost for a one-hour team standup?
For a six-person standup at average UK rates of around £35 per hour loaded, the meeting costs roughly £210 a week or £10,920 a year. If the standup leads to clearer priorities and prevents two miscommunications a quarter, it pays for itself many times over. If it is purely status updates that could go in a written channel, that £10,000 is buying you very little.
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