Cron Expression Explainer

Translate Cron Schedules into Plain English.

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Five fields, a few asterisks, and a job that either runs every minute or never. Cron syntax is compact and easy to get wrong. Was it minute then hour, or the other way round? Is Sunday 0 or 7?

Type the expression and it's spelled out: "Every 15 minutes during hours 09 to 17, Monday to Friday." Below that are the next five times it will fire, in your own time zone. That list is the quickest way to catch a mistake.

How to use the Cron Expression Explainer tool

  1. Type or paste the five fields.
  2. Read the description.
  3. Check the next run times against what you intended.
  • Checking a crontab line before saving it
  • Understanding schedules in CI pipelines, Kubernetes CronJobs and hosting panels
  • Writing a schedule by adjusting one of the examples

Tips for the best result

  • The order is minute, hour, day of month, month, day of week.
  • When both day of month and day of week are set, cron runs when either one matches.

Quick facts

PriceFree
Works withCron
Where it runsIn your browser, on your device
AccountNot needed

Frequently asked questions

Which cron format is this?

The standard five-field format used by Unix crontab, with names such as MON and JAN and shortcuts such as @daily.

Are seconds or years supported?

No. Six and seven-field formats from Quartz or AWS are not parsed.

Which time zone are the run times in?

Your device's. A server usually runs cron in its own zone, often UTC, so allow for the difference.

Is Sunday 0 or 7?

Both are accepted for Sunday.