Cron
Valid
"Every 5 minutes"
*/5
Minute
*
Hour
*
Day
*
Month
*
Weekday
Next ExecutionLocal time
1in 1m
Tue, Mar 17, 202611:50 AM
Syntax Guide
Minute
0–59
Hour
0–23
Day
1–31
Month
1–12
Weekday
0–6
*Any value
,Value list (e.g. 1,3,5)
-Range (e.g. 1-5)
/Step (e.g. */15)
*/15 - every 15 units
1,15 - at 1 and 15
1-5 - from 1 through 5
What is a cron expression?
A cron expression is a string of five (or six) fields that defines a recurring schedule. The standard format is minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week. Cron is used by Unix-like systems, CI/CD pipelines, cloud schedulers, and task runners to trigger jobs at specific times.
How it works
Each field accepts specific values, ranges (1-5), lists (1,3,5), steps (*/15), or wildcards (*). For example, 0 9 * * 1-5 means "at 9:00 AM, Monday through Friday." The day-of-week field uses 0 (Sunday) through 6 (Saturday).
How to use this tool
- Type a cron expression to see a human-readable description and upcoming run times
- Use the visual editor to build expressions by selecting values for each field
- Pick from presets for common schedules (every minute, hourly, daily, weekly)
Common use cases
- Scheduling database backups with
crontab - Configuring CI/CD pipeline triggers (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI)
- Setting up recurring tasks in cloud services (AWS EventBridge, GCP Cloud Scheduler)
- Debugging why a cron job isn't firing at the expected time