Cron Expression Explainer
Paste a standard 5-field cron expression to see what it means in plain English and when it will run next. Times are shown in your local timezone.
Cron expression format
A standard cron expression has five fields: minute (0-59) hour (0-23) day of month (1-31) month (1-12 or JAN-DEC) day of week (0-7 or SUN-SAT, where 0 and 7 are Sunday).
Special characters
* means every value, , separates a list (1,15), - defines a range (1-5) and / defines a step (*/10 is every 10). Shortcuts like @daily, @hourly, @weekly, @monthly and @yearly are also supported.
Day-of-month vs day-of-week
If both fields are restricted, standard cron runs the job when either one matches. Some platforms (Quartz, AWS EventBridge) use 6 or 7 fields with seconds and years - this tool covers the classic 5-field format used by Linux crontab, GitHub Actions and Kubernetes CronJobs.
Frequently asked questions
What does */5 * * * * mean?
It runs every 5 minutes, at minutes 0, 5, 10 and so on of every hour.
How do I run a cron job every weekday at 9am?
Use 0 9 * * 1-5 - minute 0, hour 9, any day of month, any month, Monday to Friday.
What timezone does cron use?
Cron runs in the timezone of the server or scheduler that executes it, often UTC. This tool shows the next runs in your browser's local timezone for convenience.
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