Cron Expression Explainer
Paste a cron expression to see what it means in plain English and exactly when it will run next — before you put it in a crontab or CI pipeline.
Result
Enter a cron expression to see what it means.
How to use this tool
- Type a cron expression, such as
*/15 9-17 * * 1-5, or select an example. - Read the plain-English description and the next run times, shown in your time zone or in UTC.
- The Fields table shows which values each field matches.
How it works
A cron expression has five fields: minute (0–59), hour (0–23), day of month (1–31), month (1–12 or JAN–DEC) and day of week (0–7 or SUN–SAT, where 0 and 7 are both Sunday).
Each field accepts * (any), a value (5), a list (1,15), a range (9-17) and a step (*/15 or 0-30/10). The shortcuts @hourly, @daily, @weekly, @monthly and @yearly are expanded.
As in standard cron, when both day of month and day of week are restricted, the job runs on days that match either one.
Example
Office hours
*/5 9-17 * * mon-fri means every 5 minutes, between 09:00 and 17:59, on Monday through Friday.
Either day rule
0 0 13 * 5 runs at midnight on the 13th of every month and on every Friday — not only on Friday the 13th.
Privacy and limitations
- Everything runs in your browser; nothing you paste is uploaded or stored.
- Standard 5-field crontab syntax. Quartz-style 6- or 7-field expressions with seconds, and L, W or # modifiers, are not supported.
- Run times are calculated in your browser’s time zone or UTC; your server may use a different time zone.
Frequently asked questions
How do I run a job every 15 minutes?
Use */15 * * * *, which runs at minutes 0, 15, 30 and 45 of every hour.
Why does my job run on the wrong days?
If you set both day of month and day of week, cron runs when either matches. Set one of them to * to use only the other.