MeetCost

About

Most meeting costs are invisible. You see the time on the calendar. You don't see the money.

MeetCost fixes that. It adds a cost indicator directly inside Google Calendar - calculated from the meeting duration, number of attendees, and the hourly rate you set. No setup beyond that. 
No new tools. No dashboards to check. The number just appears, next to every meeting, while you use your calendar normally.

That's it. Simple premise. Surprising results.

------- WHAT IT SHOWS -------

When you click any meeting in Google Calendar, MeetCost shows a panel with:
- Total cost: duration × attendees × your hourly rate
- Breakdown: "55 people × 1h × €50/hr = €2,750"
- For recurring meetings: monthly and annual cost
- Colour indicator: green (under €100), yellow (€100–€500), 
  red (over €500)

The annual cost line tends to be the one that makes people pause. €300 per session is easy to ignore. €15,600 per year is harder.

------- SMART RECOMMENDATIONS -------

Beyond the cost, MeetCost analyses each meeting across six dimensions and surfaces up to two specific recommendations per event:

- Cost efficiency - is the spend proportionate to the structure?
- Attendee quality - does the group size match the meeting goal?
- Time quality - is it scheduled when people are actually 
  at their best?
- Structure quality - does it have a clear title, agenda, 
  or pre-read?
- Recurrence health - is this recurring meeting still 
  earning its place?
- Format fit - is a synchronous meeting actually the right 
  format here?

Recommendations are specific to each meeting, not generic. They reference actual numbers from the event — attendee count, cost, recurrence frequency, time of day. 

For example:
→ "This weekly meeting costs €15.8k/month. Set a sunset date - run it 4 more times, then decide if it's still needed."
→ "12 people awaiting confirmation. You may be paying for empty chairs."
→ "Late-day meetings tend to produce lower engagement. Could this move to morning?"

1:1s and interviews are recognised as high-value meeting types 
and are never flagged unnecessarily.

------- SETTINGS -------

One input: your average hourly rate per person.
One dropdown: your currency (EUR, USD, GBP).
One button: Save.

That's the entire settings page. MeetCost is intentionally simple - the goal is to see the cost with zero friction, not to configure a new system.

------- WHO IT'S FOR -------

MeetCost is useful for anyone who organises or attends meetings regularly and wants a clearer picture of where team time goes.

In practice it tends to resonate most with:
- Project managers and product managers who own team calendars
- Engineering managers protecting their team's focus time
- Founders and ops leads trying to understand where productivity is leaking
- Anyone who has suspected their calendar is out of control but couldn't quantify it

You don't need a specific role to use it. You just need a Google Calendar and a rough sense of what people's time costs at your company.

------- PRIVACY -------

Everything runs locally in your browser.

- No data is sent to any server
- No account or sign-in required
- No tracking or analytics
- Settings stored in Chrome's local storage on your device only

MeetCost reads what's visible on your Google Calendar page to calculate costs. It does not access your Google account, your email, or anything outside the calendar tab you're currently viewing.

------- BACKGROUND -------

MeetCost is part of the Lazy PM project - built around the idea that the best manager is not the busiest, but the smartest.

The tool came from a simple frustration: meeting costs are one of the most common sources of wasted time in tech companies, but they're completely invisible in the tools where meetings are actually scheduled. Google Calendar shows you duration. It doesn't show you what that duration costs.

MeetCost shows you the number. What you do with it is up to you.

------- TECHNICAL -------

- Works on: Google Calendar (calendar.google.com)
- Browser: Google Chrome
- Manifest version: V3
- No external services or APIs
- Fully client-side, no backend