Interactive tool
Cost-per-beneficiary calculator
Calculate the full cost per unique beneficiary, per contact and per output, including shared and indirect costs.
Example values for demonstration. Calculations run in your browser; nothing you enter is stored or sent.
Results
Full cost per unique beneficiary
USD 37.50
- Full programme cost
- USD 150,000
- Shared costs as a share of full cost
- 20%
- Direct cost per beneficiary (without shared costs)
- USD 30.00
- Cost per contact or service
- USD 15.79
- Cost per training sessions
- USD 600
Each beneficiary received 2.4 contacts on average. Dividing by contacts instead of unique people would understate the cost per beneficiary by 58%.
Related guide: Cost-per-Beneficiary and Value-for-Money Guide for Donor Proposals
How it works
- Full cost = direct costs + shared and indirect costs
- Cost per beneficiary = full cost ÷ unique beneficiaries reached
- Cost per contact = full cost ÷ contacts or services delivered
- Cost per output = full cost ÷ outputs delivered
Counting each person once is what makes a cost per beneficiary comparable over time. Contacts and services are better reported as outputs. Shared costs such as management, office and monitoring are part of the true cost of delivery, so leaving them out makes unit costs look lower than they are.
A cost per beneficiary measures efficiency. It says nothing about whether results were achieved or whether the right people were reached, so read it alongside effectiveness and equity indicators.
Need this done properly?
This tool shows the method. For decision-grade evidence we build locally adapted, independently checked analyses with every input traced to a source.