How much do meetings cost?

The honest answer is that it depends on who is in the room and for how long. There is no single figure, but there is a simple, reproducible way to work it out. The cost of a meeting is the combined value of the time everyone spends in it: meeting cost = the sum of each attendee's hourly rate, multiplied by how many people share that rate, multiplied by the duration in hours. To turn a salary into an hourly rate, divide the annual salary by roughly 1,750 working hours a year. That is the whole model, and every number below is worked from it so you can reproduce each one yourself.

A note on the figures: everything here is an illustrative estimate built on assumed salaries, not survey data or researched statistics. The rates are examples chosen to be realistic for the UK. Swap in your own numbers and the arithmetic still holds.

What drives the cost

Four things move the number, and they compound. Attendees: cost scales directly with headcount, so doubling the room doubles the bill. Seniority: a room of senior people costs far more per minute than a room of the same size at junior rates. Duration: a meeting is priced by the hour, so thirty minutes costs half what an hour does. Frequency: a modest weekly meeting becomes a large annual figure once you multiply it across the year. Hold all four in mind and the cost of any meeting becomes predictable rather than mysterious.

From salary to hourly rate

Dividing an annual salary by 1,750 assumes a standard working year after holiday and typical non-productive time. A few worked examples:

• £30,000 ÷ 1,750 = £17.14 per hour
• £35,000 ÷ 1,750 = £20.00 per hour
• £45,000 ÷ 1,750 = £25.71 per hour
• £90,000 ÷ 1,750 = £51.43 per hour

Worked examples at illustrative UK rates

Here are three common meetings, each priced with the formula. The rates are assumptions, but the arithmetic is exact, so you can follow every step.

Meeting	People and assumed salary	Hourly rate each	Duration	Cost
Daily standup	8 at £35,000	£20.00	30 min	£80.00
Project meeting	6 at £45,000	£25.71	1 hour	£154.29
Leadership meeting	5 at £90,000	£51.43	1 hour	£257.14

Reproducing the standup: 8 people × £20.00 = £160.00 for a combined hour, and half an hour is half of that, so £80.00. The project meeting: 6 × £25.71 ≈ £154.29 for the full hour. The leadership meeting: 5 × £51.43 ≈ £257.14. Same formula every time, only the inputs change.

The hidden multipliers

The single-meeting figure is only the beginning. Three multipliers usually make the real cost larger.

Recurring meetings over a year

A meeting that looks cheap once is rarely held once. Take the £80.00 standup and run it every working week: £80.00 × 52 = £4,160 a year, for one recurring slot in one team's calendar. Frequency is where small meetings quietly become significant spend.

Prep and context-switching time

The scheduled time is not the only time spent. If those same eight people each spend fifteen minutes preparing or resettling around the meeting, that is another 8 × £20.00 × 0.25 = £40.00 attached to every occurrence, half as much again on top of the meeting itself.

The fully-loaded multiplier

Salary is not the true cost of employing someone. Employer National Insurance, pension contributions and overheads typically add somewhere between 25% and 40%. Applying a mid-range multiplier of 1.3 to the examples gives a fairer picture of what the business actually spends:

Meeting	Salary-based cost	Fully loaded (×1.3)
Standup, 8 people, 30 min	£80.00	£104.00
Project meeting, 6 people, 1 hr	£154.29	£200.57
Leadership meeting, 5 people, 1 hr	£257.14	£334.29

Combine two multipliers and the effect is striking: the fully-loaded standup at £104.00, held weekly, is £104.00 × 52 = £5,408 a year.

How to work out your number

You can produce a figure for any meeting in your own calendar in a few minutes.

1. List everyone who attends and their approximate annual salary.
2. Divide each salary by 1,750 to get an hourly rate.
3. Multiply each hourly rate by the meeting's duration in hours.
4. Add those amounts together for the salary-based cost.
5. If you want the true cost to the business, multiply by 1.3 for a fully-loaded estimate.
6. For a recurring meeting, multiply by the number of times it runs in a year.

None of this is meant to argue that meetings are wasteful. Many are worth far more than they cost. The point is simply to make the price visible, so the decision to meet is a deliberate one. If the number looks high, it is usually the headcount or the frequency doing the work, and both are easy to adjust. For practical ways to bring the figure down, see how to reduce meeting costs.

Get your own figure

These are illustrative models with assumed rates, offered so you can check the method rather than take a headline on trust. To price a real meeting with your own salaries, durations and headcount, use the meeting cost calculator. It applies exactly the formula above in real time, so you can watch the cost climb as the meeting runs and decide, deliberately, whether it is worth it. Attention is valuable; it is worth spending on purpose.