How do you calculate the cost of a meeting?

Multiply the number of participants by their average hourly cost, then multiply by the meeting duration in hours. For a more accurate figure, add 23 minutes per person for focus recovery time and 15 minutes per person for preparation. Our free calculator at menutes.com/tools/meeting-cost-calculator does this math automatically.

What is the average cost of a one-hour meeting?

For a typical meeting with 5 participants at an average hourly cost of $50, the direct cost is $250. Adding preparation and recovery time brings the true cost to approximately $385. Annual cost for a weekly recurring meeting of this size: approximately $20,000.

How many meetings per week is too many?

Research suggests that individual contributors become significantly less productive when they spend more than 40% of their time in meetings (about 16 hours per week). For managers, the threshold is higher but still applies: above 60% meeting time, strategic thinking and decision quality decline.

Do AI meeting tools reduce meeting costs?

AI meeting tools don't reduce the direct salary cost of meetings, but they significantly reduce the total cost by eliminating manual note-taking time (saving 4-5 hours per person per week) and improving follow-up speed and action item completion rates.

Blog|Tools

How Much Do Meetings Really Cost? [Free Calculator]

Last updated February 15, 2026•8 min read

Markus Maila, CTO & Co-founder

Every meeting has a price tag, but most teams never calculate it. Use our free meeting cost calculator to find out exactly how much your recurring meetings cost per week, per month, and per year. The numbers might surprise you.

Try the meeting cost calculator

Use our free meeting cost calculator to estimate the real cost of your meetings. Enter the number of participants, average hourly cost or salary, meeting duration, and how often you meet. The calculator shows you the cost per meeting, plus weekly, monthly, and annual totals.

You can find the full interactive calculator at menutes.com/tools/meeting-cost-calculator.

How to calculate meeting costs

The basic formula for meeting cost is straightforward: number of participants multiplied by each participant's hourly cost, multiplied by the meeting duration in hours.

For example, a 1-hour meeting with 6 participants earning an average of $60/hour costs $360. If that meeting happens weekly, it costs $18,720 per year. If it runs 15 minutes over each time, the annual cost increases by $4,680 to $23,400.

But the direct salary cost is only part of the picture. Research from the University of California, Irvine shows that it takes an average of 23 minutes to fully regain focus after a meeting. For a team of 6 people, that's 138 minutes of lost recovery time per meeting, which at $60/hour adds another $138 to the true cost of each meeting.

When you factor in preparation time (an average of 15 minutes per participant for a well-run meeting), the total cost of a single weekly team meeting for 6 people is closer to $30,000 per year.

The hidden costs most teams miss

Direct salary cost is the most obvious meeting expense, but several hidden costs make the real number much higher.

Opportunity cost: every hour spent in a meeting is an hour not spent on productive work. For revenue-generating roles like sales or engineering, this has a direct bottom-line impact. A salesperson spending 3 extra hours per week in internal meetings could be losing $50,000+ in annual closed deals.

Context-switching cost: the average knowledge worker switches tasks 300 times per day. Each meeting creates at least two context switches (into the meeting and back to work), and the cognitive cost compounds throughout the day. Back-to-back meetings are the worst offenders, as there's no recovery time between switches.

Scheduling overhead: the average meeting requires 2.5 scheduling interactions (emails, Slack messages, or calendar adjustments) before it happens. For an organization scheduling 100 meetings per week, that's 250 micro-interactions just on logistics.

Decision delay: meetings often create bottlenecks in decision-making. When a decision requires getting 8 people in a room, the calendar coordination alone can delay the decision by 3-5 business days. Asynchronous decisions using documented meeting notes can reduce this delay significantly.

How to reduce meeting costs

The most effective way to reduce meeting costs is to hold fewer meetings. An MIT study found that companies that cut meetings by 40% saw a 71% increase in productivity. Here are specific strategies that work.

Audit your recurring meetings: review every recurring meeting on your calendar. For each one, ask: does this meeting have a clear purpose? Could the same outcome be achieved asynchronously? Are all attendees necessary? Many teams find that 30-40% of their recurring meetings can be eliminated or replaced with asynchronous updates.

Reduce meeting size: Amazon's "two-pizza rule" (no meeting should have more attendees than two pizzas could feed) is backed by data. Research shows that meetings with more than 7 participants have significantly lower productivity ratings. Each additional participant above 7 reduces the quality of discussion and decision-making.

Shorten default durations: change your calendar's default meeting length from 60 minutes to 25 minutes (or 50 minutes for longer sessions). Parkinson's Law applies to meetings: work expands to fill the time available. Most 60-minute meetings can achieve the same outcomes in 30 minutes with a clear agenda.

Use AI transcription for documentation: one of the biggest time costs in meetings is manual note-taking and follow-up. AI meeting transcription tools like Menutes can save 4-5 hours per person per week by automating the documentation process. The notes are more accurate, and the follow-up is faster because action items are captured in real time.

What makes a meeting worth its cost?

Not all meetings are wasteful. Some meetings create enormous value, and the key is distinguishing between the two.

High-value meetings typically share these characteristics: they have a clear decision to make, the right people are in the room (and only the right people), there's a prepared agenda, and outcomes are documented and distributed afterward.

Brainstorming and creative sessions are often best done in person or via video call, because the real-time exchange of ideas creates outcomes that asynchronous communication can't replicate. Strategic planning sessions, conflict resolution, and relationship-building meetings also benefit from real-time interaction.

Low-value meetings are typically status updates (better as written reports), FYI presentations (better as recorded videos), and routine check-ins that exist out of habit rather than necessity. If no decisions are made and no new information is generated, the meeting probably didn't need to happen.

The goal isn't zero meetings. It's ensuring that every meeting creates value that exceeds its cost. With average meeting costs running $200-500 per hour when you account for all participants, that's a high bar to clear.