Free tool
What your evenings are actually costing
Founders routinely treat their own hours as free, which is why doing marketing yourself looks cheaper than it is. This prices those hours at what you would pay to replace them, then shows the annual figure and what the same money would buy if you spent it instead of your evenings.
Last reviewed 27 August 2026
Result
Monthly cost of your marketing hours
$7,794
Annual cost
$93,600
That is 15.6 full working weeks of product time
Where the hours go
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Hours a week | 12 |
| Of which outside work hours | 7.2 |
| Hours a year | 624 |
| Cost a week | $1,800 |
About 7.2 of those hours a week come out of your evenings. That is the cost nobody puts in the spreadsheet, and it is the one that decides whether the work keeps happening in month four.
How this works
What the numbers mean.
- 01Weekly cost is hours multiplied by your replacement rate. The replacement rate is what you would pay to have an hour of your product work done by someone else, which is almost always higher than your salary divided by hours worked.
- 02The annual figure is converted into full working weeks, because weeks of lost product time is the unit founders actually feel.
- 03The evening share matters more than the total. Work that happens after hours is the first thing to stop when a deadline lands, which is why founder-run marketing tends to arrive in bursts and then vanish.
Assumptions and limits
- This measures opportunity cost, not cash. The money does not leave your account, which is exactly why this cost stays invisible.
- It assumes your hours are fungible between marketing and product. In practice context switching makes the real cost higher.
Questions about this tool
What rate should I use?
Isn't founder-led marketing supposed to be an advantage?
What do I do with this number?
This tool is free and there is nothing to sign up for. If you would rather have the work done than calculate it, that is what Zway does.