The Meeting Cost Index: What Common Meetings Cost in 2026
The Meeting Cost Index is a reference table of what standard workplace meetings cost in employee salary time, calculated with a transparent formula at the average U.S. knowledge-worker salary of $85,000. A daily standup costs about $11,700 a year. A weekly one-hour status call for eight people costs about $15,700 a year. A monthly 50-person all-hands costs about $24,500 a year. Last updated: August 2026.
The Index
| Meeting type | Attendees | Length | Cost per occurrence | Cost per year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Daily standup | 5 | 15 min | $51 | ~$11,700 |
| Weekly 1:1 | 2 | 30 min | $41 | ~$1,960 |
| Weekly status call | 8 | 1 hour | $327 | ~$15,700 |
| Biweekly sprint planning | 8 | 2 hours | $654 | ~$17,000 |
| Monthly all-hands | 50 | 1 hour | $2,043 | ~$24,500 |
| Quarterly planning session | 12 | 4 hours | $1,962 | ~$7,850 |
| Hiring loop (per candidate) | 4 interviewers | 4 × 45 min | $490 | — |
All figures are direct salary cost only. For a realistic fully-loaded cost — benefits, payroll taxes, office space, equipment — multiply by roughly 1.3.
Methodology
Every number in the Index comes from the same formula:
Cost = attendees × (average salary ÷ 2,080) × meeting length in hours
- Salary assumption: $85,000 per attendee, a mid-range U.S. knowledge-worker salary. At $85,000, one hour of one person’s time costs $40.87.
- 2,080 is the standard count of annual U.S. working hours (52 weeks × 40 hours).
- Annualization: daily meetings assume 230 working days per year; weekly meetings assume 48 working weeks; biweekly, 26 occurrences; monthly, 12; quarterly, 4.
- Figures are rounded to the nearest dollar (per occurrence) and to round hundreds (per year).
Your team’s real numbers will differ with salaries and headcount — compute them live with our free meeting cost calculator, which runs this exact formula in real time, or read the full 2026 meeting cost breakdown.
Context: how much of this spend is wasted?
The research consensus is that a large minority of meeting time buys nothing:
- Rogelberg (2022): employees average ~18 meeting hours per week and would decline about a third of invitations if they could; unnecessary attendance costs employers over $25,000 per employee per year, and roughly $101 million annually for a 5,000-person organization.
- Atlassian: the average professional spends 31 hours per month in unproductive meetings.
- Mark, UC Irvine: regaining deep focus after an interruption takes ~23 minutes, so each meeting also taxes the time around it.
Applied to the Index: if a third of that weekly status call is unnecessary attendance, the call is quietly wasting about $5,200 a year — one meeting, one team.
Citing this index
You are welcome to cite or reproduce these figures with attribution. Suggested citation: Meeting Cost Index, MeetingPriceTag.com, August 2026 edition. The Index uses a fixed, published methodology so figures can be independently recomputed; we review the assumptions and refresh the figures periodically.
Prefer the live version to static figures? You can embed the real-time calculator on your own site for free — one line of code, works on any platform, and your readers get their own numbers instead of ours.
Frequently asked questions
Why use an $85,000 salary assumption?
It is a defensible midpoint for U.S. knowledge workers — high enough to reflect the professionals who fill most recurring meetings, low enough not to overstate costs. Because the methodology is published, you can rescale any figure: cost scales linearly with salary.
Do these numbers include benefits and overhead?
No — the Index reports direct salary cost, the most conservative measure. Multiply by roughly 1.3 for fully-loaded cost.
How can I get numbers for my own meetings?
Use the real-time meeting cost calculator: enter attendees and average salary (or hourly rate) and watch the cost accumulate live during the meeting itself.
