Decode any cron expression into plain English and preview the next scheduled run times. Build cron schedules for Linux, Kubernetes CronJobs, GitHub Actions, and more.
Runs every 5 minutes
The cron expression is made of five fields. Each field can have the following values.
| * | * | * | * | * |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| minute (0–59) | hour (0–23) | day of month (1–31) | month (1–12) | day of week (0–6) |
Here are some examples for you.
| Cron expression | Schedule |
|---|---|
| * * * * * | Every minute |
| 0 * * * * | Every hour |
| 0 0 * * * | Every day at 12:00 AM |
| 0 9 * * 1-5 | At 9:00 AM, weekdays only |
| 0 0 * * 5 | At 12:00 AM, only on Fridays |
| 0 0 1 * * | At 12:00 AM, on day 1 of the month |
| 0 0 1 1,4,7,10 * | At 12:00 AM, 1st day of each quarter |
| */15 * * * * | Every 15 minutes |
| 30 6 * * 1,3,5 | At 6:30 AM, Mon / Wed / Fri |
Click any row to try it.
A cron expression is a string of 5 fields (minute, hour, day of month, month, day of week) that defines when a scheduled task runs. For example, "0 9 * * 1-5" means every weekday at 9:00 AM.
"* * * * *" means "every minute". Each asterisk is a wildcard that matches all values for that field: minute, hour, day of month, month, and day of week respectively.
Use the expression "*/5 * * * *". The */5 in the minute field means "every 5 minutes". Similarly, "*/15 * * * *" runs every 15 minutes.
Yes — Kubernetes CronJobs use the same standard cron expression format. The schedule field in a CronJob spec accepts any valid cron expression, for example: schedule: "0 2 * * *" to run daily at 2 AM.
Cron is the scheduler daemon that runs scheduled tasks on Unix/Linux systems. Crontab (cron table) is the configuration file that lists the cron jobs for a user. You edit crontab with the "crontab -e" command.
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