Cost Of — What things actually cost.
The costs nobody invoices.
A weekly meeting, a forgotten subscription, an interruption, a bad hire, an hour of downtime — Cost Of turns each of them into a single figure on a receipt you can send to the person who decides.
What it does
Each calculator asks for the few inputs that actually move the number — how many people, at what seniority, for how long, how often — and returns one figure with the arithmetic shown underneath. No dashboards, no sign-up, no fourteen-step wizard.
Salaries do not have to be guessed. Presets cover fifteen countries and ten roles at median gross pay in local currency, and every one of them is editable: use the preset to start the conversation, override it with your real numbers before you take it to a meeting.
The result is a receipt. Copy it as a link, save it as an image, or open a share card whose link preview already carries the number — which is usually what makes the point in a chat thread without anyone having to click.
Why these costs stay invisible
Nobody sends an invoice for a recurring meeting. It has no line item, no owner and no renewal date, so it never appears in the budget review that kills a €40-per-month tool — even when it consumes twenty times as much money every year.
Time is the currency, and time is denominated in salaries, which people are reluctant to say out loud. Once an hour of a room becomes an amount, the argument changes from "this meeting feels long" to a number the person with the calendar can act on.
The same blindness covers everything with a diffuse cost: subscriptions nobody cancels because each one is small, interruptions that cost far more than the minute they take, a hire that does not work out and quietly consumes a quarter of a team's year.
None of these numbers need to be exact to be useful. An order of magnitude, with the assumptions visible and editable, is enough to make a decision that was previously being made by vibes.
How it works
01
One pure model per calculator
Each calculator is a small, self-contained model with its inputs, its formula and its presentation kept separate. That is why the arithmetic can be shown to you in full — there is nothing behind the number except the number.
02
Salary presets you can overrule
Fifteen countries by ten roles, at median gross pay in the local currency, with sources kept alongside the data. They are a starting point, not an authority: every field is editable and your override travels with the result.
03
The link is the document
Inputs are encoded in the URL. Nothing is stored on a server, there is no account, and sending someone your scenario is sending them a link that reopens exactly the numbers you used.
04
A receipt built to be forwarded
The output is deliberately shaped like something you can paste into a thread: a headline figure, the assumptions under it, and a share card whose preview shows the number before anyone opens the link.
When to use it
Killing or shortening a recurring meeting
Eight people, one hour, every week. Put the annual figure next to the agenda and the conversation about whether it should be a written update becomes a short one.
The annual SaaS clean-up
Every subscription looks affordable on its own. Totalled, with seats nobody uses, the stack usually produces a number that pays for something the team has been asking for all year.
Arguing for focus time
Interruption costs are not the length of the interruption. Show what a fragmented day actually costs and "no meetings before noon" stops sounding like a preference.
Making the case for one more hire
Run the cost of the wrong hire against the cost of the vacancy staying open. Both numbers are uncomfortable, and having both is what makes the decision defensible.
Justifying reliability work
An hour of downtime has a price in lost revenue and in the people who stop what they are doing. That figure is what turns "we should fix the deploy pipeline" into a funded piece of work.
Questions people ask
- Is it free?
- Yes — every calculator, no account, no limits, no ads. It runs entirely in your browser, which is why it can stay free.
- Where do the salary numbers come from?
- Published median gross pay per country and role, kept with their sources, in local currency. They are presets for a first pass, and every one of them can be replaced with your real figures.
- Are my inputs sent anywhere?
- No. They are encoded in the URL and computed in your browser. Visits are counted with cookieless analytics that records no personal data and no inputs.
- How accurate is this?
- As accurate as your inputs, and it shows you the arithmetic so you can judge. The point is not a precise figure to four digits but a defensible order of magnitude with the assumptions on the table.
- Can I share a result?
- That is the design. Copy the link, save a PNG of the receipt, or paste the share card into a chat where the preview already shows the number.
- Can I use my own currency?
- Yes. Country presets set a sensible default and you can change both the amounts and the currency; the receipt formats itself accordingly.
- Which calculators are there?
- The recurring meeting, the SaaS stack, context switching, a bad hire and downtime — the costs that come up most often in the arguments people actually have at work.
- Will you add more?
- When a real question keeps recurring, yes. If you rebuild the same spreadsheet every quarter, describe it to us and it may become the next one.
Open Cost Of
Pick the meeting that keeps ending without a decision. It takes about a minute to find out what it costs per year.
Run a calculatorcostof.autofract.com