What does this meeting really cost?
Add who’s in the room, how long it runs and how often. See the cost per minute, per meeting and per year, then run a live meter while it happens.
Updated November 9, 2026 · By Mo Arfaj, founder of Creepless
A meeting costs the combined hourly cost of everyone in it, multiplied by its length in hours. Hourly cost is annual salary ÷ 2,080 working hours, times about 1.3 for payroll taxes, benefits and overhead. A one-hour meeting with five people earning $80,000 a year costs about $250; held weekly, about $12,000 a year.
Meeting Cost Calculator
Who's in the meeting
The meeting
The meeting cost formula
Three steps: turn pay into a loaded hourly cost, multiply by time in the room, then by how often it happens.
- 2,080 hours
- 40 hours a week × 52 weeks: the standard way to turn a salary into an hourly rate.
- Loaded multiplier (1.3)
- Covers payroll taxes, benefits, equipment and office costs on top of pay.
- Prep and refocus time
- Joining, reading the agenda and getting back into deep work afterwards. Usually 5–15 minutes per person.
- Meetings per year
- Based on 48 working weeks: daily = 240, weekly = 48, every two weeks = 24, monthly = 12.
A weekly status meeting at a small agency
Attendees: the founder ($140,000), an account manager ($65,000) and three designers and developers ($75,000 each). Loaded at 1.3×, that is $87.50 + $40.63 + 3 × $46.88 = $268.75 an hour in the room.
The meeting runs 60 minutes, plus 10 minutes of prep and refocus each: $268.75 × 70 ÷ 60 = $313.54. It happens 48 times a year.
$314 per meeting, $15,050 a year, and 280 person-hours.
What common meetings cost
Five people at an $80,000 average salary, loaded at 1.3× ($50 an hour each), meeting time only.
| Meeting | People | Per meeting | Per year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Daily 15-minute stand-up | 5 | $62.50 | $15,000 |
| Weekly 1-hour team meeting | 5 | $250 | $12,000 |
| Weekly 45-minute client status call | 3 | $112.50 | $5,400 |
| Monthly 2-hour planning session | 5 | $500 | $6,000 |
| 1:1 every two weeks, 30 minutes | 2 | $50 | $1,200 |
The stand-up is the cheapest meeting per sitting and the most expensive per year. Frequency matters more than length.
How to calculate the cost of a meeting
- 1
List who attends
Add each role and how many people from it attend. Enter annual salaries, or hourly rates if you know them.
- 2
Set the length
Enter the scheduled minutes, plus prep and refocus time per person. 10 minutes is a fair default.
- 3
Pick how often
One-off, daily, weekly, every two weeks or monthly. The yearly cost is where recurring meetings hurt.
- 4
Adjust the multiplier
Keep 1.3 for loaded salary cost. For billable rates, set it to 1 to see the revenue the hours could have earned.
- 5
Read and share
Copy the result, copy a share link with your inputs, or save the page as a PDF for the next planning meeting.
- 6
Run the live meter
Press “Start meeting” when it begins. Watching the number climb keeps agendas short.
Cut meeting costs without losing alignment
Default to 25 or 50 minutes
Shorter defaults save the most on recurring meetings, and give people time between calls.
Invite fewer people
Everyone who only needs the outcome can read the notes. One fewer senior attendee often saves thousands a year.
Move status updates to writing
Updates that don’t need discussion work better as a written note or short video.
No agenda, no meeting
Every meeting needs a goal and an owner for the decision. If neither exists, cancel it.
Price client meetings in
Agree how many calls a retainer includes. Extra calls are extra work, and can be quoted like any other request.
Audit recurring meetings each quarter
List every recurring meeting with its yearly cost. Cut or shorten the bottom third.
How do you calculate the cost of a meeting?
Work out each attendee’s hourly cost (annual salary ÷ 2,080, times about 1.3 for taxes, benefits and overhead), add them up, and multiply by the meeting length in hours. Multiply by the number of times it happens in a year for the yearly cost. Adding 5–10 minutes per person for prep and getting back to focused work gives a more honest number.
What does an average meeting cost?
It depends on who attends, but a useful rule of thumb: one hour with five people on $80,000 salaries costs about $250 once overhead is included. The same meeting every week costs about $12,000 a year, and a daily 15-minute stand-up for that team costs about $15,000 a year.
Should I use salaries or billable rates?
Use loaded salaries to see what a meeting costs the business. Agencies and consultancies can also enter billable rates with a multiplier of 1: that shows the revenue those hours could have earned with clients, which is the real cost of internal meetings in a billable business.
Why multiply salary by 1.3?
An employee costs more than their salary. Payroll taxes, health insurance, pension contributions, equipment, software and office space typically add 25–40%. A multiplier of 1.3 is a common middle estimate; use 1 if you only want raw pay.
Why 2,080 working hours a year?
It is 40 hours × 52 weeks, the standard figure for converting an annual salary to an hourly rate. People actually work fewer hours after holidays and leave, so 2,080 gives a slightly conservative hourly cost.
How much do client meetings cost an agency?
A weekly 45-minute status call with three people from the agency, at $50 an hour each loaded, costs about $5,400 a year per client. If the retainer doesn’t price those calls in, they are unpaid work. Write the number of included meetings into the scope and quote any extra ones.
Is the data I enter stored anywhere?
No. The calculator runs entirely in your browser. A share link encodes your inputs in the URL itself, so only people you send it to can see them.
Keep running the numbers
Make extra client calls a line item
Creepless checks every client request against the plan, including calls beyond what the retainer covers. Free for two clients.
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