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Translate a cron schedule into plain English, validate it, and preview the next runs.
At 09:00, on weekdays (Monday through Friday).
minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week.Supports *, ranges (1-5), lists (1,15), steps (*/15), and month/weekday names. All parsing happens in your browser.
A cron expression is a compact string that tells a scheduler exactly when to run a recurring task, such as a backup, report, or cleanup job. It packs a full schedule into five space-separated fields that together answer the question "at which minutes, hours, and days should this run?" This free Cron Expression Explainer decodes any expression into plain English, validates each field, and previews the next run times so you never have to guess what */5 * * * * actually means.
*/5 * * * * into the input field.A standard cron expression has five fields, in order: minute (0–59), hour (0–23), day-of-month (1–31), month(1–12 or names like JAN), and day-of-week(0–7, where 0 and 7 both mean Sunday). Special characters give each field flexibility: * means "every value," , lists several values (1,15,30), - defines a range (1-5), and / sets a step interval (*/10 means every tenth unit).
*/5 * * * * — every 5 minutes.0 * * * * — every hour, on the hour.0 0 * * * — once a day at midnight.0 9 * * 1-5 — at 9:00 AM on weekdays (Monday through Friday).0 0 1 * * — once a month, at midnight on the first day.In a cron expression, */5in the minute field means "every 5 minutes." The slash is the step operator: */5 starts at 0 and repeats at each 5-unit interval (0, 5, 10, 15, and so on). So */5 * * * * runs a job every five minutes, all day, every day.
A standard cron expression has five fields, separated by spaces: minute, hour, day-of-month, month, and day-of-week. Some systems add a sixth leading field for seconds or a trailing field for the year, but classic Unix crontab uses exactly five fields.
Day-of-month (field 3) selects calendar dates 1 to 31, while day-of-week (field 5) selects weekdays 0 to 7, where both 0 and 7 mean Sunday. When both fields are restricted, most cron implementations run the job if either condition matches, not only when both match.
Standard Unix cron does not support seconds; its smallest interval is one minute. Some schedulers such as Quartz, node-cron, and Spring add an optional sixth field for seconds at the start of the expression, but you should not assume seconds work everywhere.
Translate a cron schedule into plain English, validate it, and preview the next runs.
At 09:00, on weekdays (Monday through Friday).
minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week.Supports *, ranges (1-5), lists (1,15), steps (*/15), and month/weekday names. All parsing happens in your browser.
A cron expression is a compact string that tells a scheduler exactly when to run a recurring task, such as a backup, report, or cleanup job. It packs a full schedule into five space-separated fields that together answer the question "at which minutes, hours, and days should this run?" This free Cron Expression Explainer decodes any expression into plain English, validates each field, and previews the next run times so you never have to guess what */5 * * * * actually means.
*/5 * * * * into the input field.A standard cron expression has five fields, in order: minute (0–59), hour (0–23), day-of-month (1–31), month(1–12 or names like JAN), and day-of-week(0–7, where 0 and 7 both mean Sunday). Special characters give each field flexibility: * means "every value," , lists several values (1,15,30), - defines a range (1-5), and / sets a step interval (*/10 means every tenth unit).
*/5 * * * * — every 5 minutes.0 * * * * — every hour, on the hour.0 0 * * * — once a day at midnight.0 9 * * 1-5 — at 9:00 AM on weekdays (Monday through Friday).0 0 1 * * — once a month, at midnight on the first day.In a cron expression, */5in the minute field means "every 5 minutes." The slash is the step operator: */5 starts at 0 and repeats at each 5-unit interval (0, 5, 10, 15, and so on). So */5 * * * * runs a job every five minutes, all day, every day.
A standard cron expression has five fields, separated by spaces: minute, hour, day-of-month, month, and day-of-week. Some systems add a sixth leading field for seconds or a trailing field for the year, but classic Unix crontab uses exactly five fields.
Day-of-month (field 3) selects calendar dates 1 to 31, while day-of-week (field 5) selects weekdays 0 to 7, where both 0 and 7 mean Sunday. When both fields are restricted, most cron implementations run the job if either condition matches, not only when both match.
Standard Unix cron does not support seconds; its smallest interval is one minute. Some schedulers such as Quartz, node-cron, and Spring add an optional sixth field for seconds at the start of the expression, but you should not assume seconds work everywhere.