Enter attendee count, average pay, and planned duration.
Start this when the meeting starts to watch the cost tick up in real time.
The math behind a meeting's true cost is simple but easy to overlook in the moment: multiply the number of attendees by their average pay rate, then by the fraction of an hour the meeting takes up. A one-hour meeting with six people earning an average of $45/hour costs roughly $270 in salary time alone, before counting any lost productivity from the context-switch afterward.
Converting an annual salary to an hourly rate uses the common 2,080-hours-per-year approximation (52 weeks times 40 hours), which is a simplification — it doesn't account for benefits, payroll overhead, or paid time off, all of which would push the real fully-loaded cost higher still.
The live running-cost timer is meant as a practical, shareable check during an actual meeting: starting it when the meeting begins gives a real-time dollar figure ticking upward, which tends to sharpen everyone's sense of whether the conversation is worth its cost.
Attendees × hourly rate × (duration in minutes ÷ 60). If you enter an annual salary instead, it's first converted to an hourly rate by dividing by 2,080 (the standard 52-week, 40-hour-week approximation).
No — it's based on the pay rate you enter only. A fully-loaded cost (including benefits, payroll taxes, and overhead) is typically 1.25-1.4× the base salary, so actual costs are usually higher than this estimate.
It's a real-time version of the same calculation — start it when your meeting actually begins, and watch the dollar figure increase every second based on your attendee count and rate, which can be a useful, attention-grabbing prompt during long meetings.
Yes — enter the average hourly rate or salary across all attendees. For a more precise figure with very different pay levels, you could run the calculator separately for subgroups and add the results.
