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
- Type or paste the five fields.
- Read the description.
- Check the next run times against what you intended.
Popular uses
- 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
| Price | Free |
|---|---|
| Works with | Cron |
| Where it runs | In your browser, on your device |
| Account | Not needed |