Every meeting
has a price.
Add the people in the room and start the clock. Attention Cost is a free meeting cost calculator that shows what their collective time is costing, live.
Four steps to a visible bill.
It does not argue that meetings are bad. Some meetings create enormous value. It simply asks a question organisations rarely consider: is this meeting worth what it is costing?
Add the attendees
Enter each attendee’s role, salary or estimated hourly cost.
Start the meeting
Launch the live timer the moment the meeting begins.
Watch the cost rise
See the total cost, cost per minute and cost per attendee in real time.
Decide if it’s worth it
Use the information to improve attendance, duration and meeting quality.
How the meeting cost is calculated.
There is no mystery to it. The cost of a meeting is the combined value of the time everyone spends in it.
To turn a salary into an hourly rate, divide the annual salary by roughly 1,750 working hours a year — so a £70,000 salary is about £40 per hour. Add the rates of everyone in the room to get the cost per hour, then scale by how long the meeting runs. A 30-minute meeting costs half of one hour of everyone’s time; an hour-long meeting costs a full hour.
If you want the true cost to the business, multiply by a fully-loaded factor of about 1.25 to 1.4 to account for employer National Insurance, pension and overhead. For the full method, worked examples and common mistakes, read how to calculate meeting cost — or see typical figures in how much do meetings cost.
It costs ten hours.
Every organisation measures salaries, budgets and supplier costs, but very few measure the cost of bringing people together. Attention Cost makes that expenditure visible — not to stop people meeting, but to help them meet with purpose.
Meeting cost, answered.
How do you calculate the cost of a meeting?
Add up the hourly rate of everyone in the room, then multiply by the length of the meeting in hours. In full: meeting cost = the sum of each attendee's hourly rate, multiplied by how many share that rate, multiplied by the duration in minutes divided by 60. Attention Cost does this live as the timer runs.
What hourly rate should I use for each attendee?
The quickest estimate is to divide an annual salary by about 1,750 working hours a year. A £70,000 salary is therefore roughly £40 per hour. You do not need to be precise to the penny — a defensible estimate is enough to make good decisions about who attends and for how long.
Should I use salary or the fully-loaded cost?
Either, as long as you are consistent. Salary alone gives a conservative figure. The fully-loaded cost — salary plus employer National Insurance, pension and overhead — is closer to what the business actually spends and is usually about 1.25 to 1.4 times salary.
Is the meeting cost calculator free?
Yes. Attention Cost is a free web app. There is nothing to install and no account required — open it, add your attendees and start the timer.
Can I share a meeting's cost with my team?
Yes. Every meeting can be turned into a shareable link that shows the cost, attendees and duration, so you can send the figure to colleagues or drop it into a channel after the meeting.
Read more in the meeting cost guide.