Editorial Calendar Capacity Calculator
How many pieces a month your team can really handle, crossing channels, frequency and effort with real hours. Find out if your calendar is fiction.
Why editorial calendars fall apart
It’s almost never a lack of will. It’s math. Calendars get planned with the team at 110% of capacity, without counting meetings, one-off launches or any room for peaks. The first sick day, the first urgent client or the first event wipes out two weeks of publishing.
This calculator applies a realistic overhead (meetings, Slack, lost context) and tells you whether your calendar is viable, at the limit or not going to happen. Better to have that conversation at the start of the quarter than in the retrospective.
How to read the percentage
- < 80%: healthy, there’s room for surprises and experiments.
- 80–95%: at the limit, everything has to go perfectly to deliver.
- > 95%: you won’t publish it all. Lower the frequency, add people or accept missed slots.
What to change if the numbers don’t add up
From cheapest to most expensive: (1) lower the frequency on the channel with the worst ROI, (2) repurpose and reformat (one article becomes 4 posts and a video), (3) automate mechanical tasks (scheduling, metrics, alerts), (4) outsource one-off production, (5) hire. Raising the frequency without pulling any of these five levers is how content teams burn out.
Keep going
- → True cost per piece calculator: use your real hourly cost when you plan capacity.
- → Weekly calendar template: to put the plan on paper once you know it fits.
- → Your cloud library, free to start: keep the photos and videos for every piece on the calendar at hand.