Cron Expression Generator
Build a 5-field cron schedule with visual pickers, read it in plain English, and preview the next 5 run times — all computed locally.
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Reading a cron expression
Five fields, left to right: minute (0–59), hour (0–23), day of month (1–31), month (1–12), day of week (0–6, Sunday = 0). A * means "every", */5 means "every 5", a plain number means "exactly at", and commas/ranges like 1,15 or 9-17 combine values.
Common examples
| Expression | Runs |
|---|---|
| */5 * * * * | Every 5 minutes |
| 0 * * * * | At the top of every hour |
| 30 9 * * * | 09:30 every day |
| 0 9 * * 1 | 09:00 every Monday |
| 0 0 1 * * | Midnight on the 1st of each month |
FAQ
What is a cron expression?
A cron expression is a 5-field string (
minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week) describing a recurring schedule — e.g. 30 9 * * 1 means 09:30 every Monday. Unix cron, crontab, and most job schedulers understand this format.What do the 5 cron fields mean?
Left to right: minute (0–59), hour (0–23), day of month (1–31), month (1–12), day of week (0–6, Sunday=0). A
* means "every", */5 means "every 5", and a plain number means "exactly at".How do day-of-month and day-of-week interact?
Standard cron uses OR logic when both are restricted:
0 9 1 * 5 runs at 09:00 on the 1st of the month and every Friday. If one of them is *, only the other one decides.How do I actually run a cron job?
On Linux/macOS, run
crontab -e and add a line like 30 9 * * * /path/to/script.sh. In the cloud, use your platform's scheduler (e.g. AWS EventBridge, GitHub Actions on.schedule, or a Node library like node-cron) with the same expression.Advertisement