Daily standup cost
How Much Daily Standups Really Cost
A 15-minute standup does not look expensive until you price it like payroll. Here is the annual cost by team size and fully-loaded US engineering salary, then a path off the calendar: team GitHub and Slack commit digests.
Want your own numbers? Use the free meeting cost calculator. Same formula, your salary, attendees, and duration.
The salary × team-size table
Annual cost = people × 5 standups a week × (15 ÷ 60) hours × 48 working weeks × fully-loaded hourly salary. That is 60 hours per person per year. Vacation is already baked in as 48 weeks, not 52.
Hourly rates are US engineering fully-loaded bands: cash compensation plus benefits and overhead, not take-home pay. A $150k engineer often lands near $75 to $120/hour once loaded. Figures are modeled meeting cost, not Git Digest traffic or revenue.
| Team size | $75/hrMid-level (~$155k loaded) | $100/hrSenior (~$210k loaded) | $125/hrStaff (~$260k loaded) | $150/hrStaff+ (~$310k loaded) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 engineers | $13,500 | $18,000 | $22,500 | $27,000 |
| 5 engineers | $22,500 | $30,000 | $37,500 | $45,000 |
| 8 engineers | $36,000 | $48,000 | $60,000 | $72,000 |
| 12 engineers | $54,000 | $72,000 | $90,000 | $108,000 |
| 20 engineers | $90,000 | $120,000 | $150,000 | $180,000 |
The calculator default adds a 1.2× overrun on that highlighted $30,000 cell, about $36,000 a year. Tune attendance and duration for planning, the weekly sync, or a standup that never stays at 15 minutes.
What $30,000 of standup buys
A five-person daily standup at a senior loaded rate is a mid-level contractor month, a serious conference budget, or a chunk of the tool stack you already argue about. Twelve people at staff rates clears $100,000 before anyone says "let's take this offline."
Git Digest replaces that ritual with team GitHub and Slack commit digests. The source of truth is what landed in git, not what people remember in a circle. This is not a repo-to-LLM ingest tool.
Daily standup cost FAQ
Common questions about standup salary math, loaded rates, and replacing meetings with digests.
How much does a daily standup cost?
Price it like payroll: attendees × 15 minutes × 5 days a week × 48 working weeks × a fully-loaded hourly rate. A five-person team at $100/hour spends $30,000 a year on the ritual before anyone overruns. Open the meeting cost calculator to plug in your numbers.
Why use fully-loaded salary instead of take-home pay?
A standup consumes paid time, benefits, and overhead, not just the number on an offer letter. The table uses US engineering fully-loaded hourly bands so the cost matches what the company actually spends.
Does this include meetings that run long?
The table is the base 15-minute ritual with full attendance and no overrun. The meeting cost calculator can add attendance and overrun. Its default 1.2× overrun turns that five-person, $100/hour standup into about $36,000 a year.
Can Git Digest replace our standup?
Git Digest turns GitHub activity into team commit summaries for Slack and email. Engineering leads get an async standup from shipped code instead of another calendar invite.
Is Git Digest the same as Gitingest?
No. Gitingest turns a repository into text for LLMs. Git Digest is a team product: daily or weekly GitHub commit digests for Slack and email that replace status meetings.
Replace the standup with GitHub digests
Connect GitHub and get daily or weekly team commit summaries in Slack and email. Same alignment, none of the standup tax. Then price your remaining meetings.
Start with GitHub