Cron Expression Generator
Create a cron schedule without memorising the syntax, or paste an existing expression to see exactly when it runs. Every change shows a plain-English description and the next five run times.
- Runs in your browser
- No sign-up
- Free to use
Next run times
Crontab line
How to use Cron Expression Generator
- Pick a preset such as “Every weekday at 09:00”, or fill in the five fields yourself.
- Use the helper menu next to each field for common patterns like every 5 minutes or a range.
- Read the description and check the upcoming run times to confirm the schedule is what you intend.
- Copy the expression, or the full crontab line, into your scheduler.
Cron Expression Generator features
Works both ways
Build an expression from fields, or paste one and have it parsed and explained.
Plain-English description
Each expression is translated into a sentence such as “At 09:00, Monday through Friday”.
Next run times
The next five executions are listed in your local time zone.
Common presets
One click for hourly, daily, weekly, monthly and other frequent schedules.
Field validation
Out-of-range values and malformed fields are flagged with a specific message.
Crontab line
Outputs a complete line with a placeholder command ready to edit.
When to use Cron Expression Generator
- Scheduling a backup, report or cleanup script with crontab.
- Writing the schedule for a Kubernetes CronJob, GitHub Actions workflow or CI pipeline.
- Checking what an inherited cron expression actually does.
- Confirming that a job will not fire at an unexpected time.
Cron Expression Generator FAQ
What do the five fields mean?
In order: minute (0–59), hour (0–23), day of month (1–31), month (1–12) and day of week (0–6, where 0 is Sunday; 7 is also accepted as Sunday).
What do *, comma, hyphen and slash mean?
An asterisk means every value. A comma separates a list (1,15). A hyphen gives a range (1-5). A slash gives a step: */15 in the minute field means every 15 minutes, and 9-17/2 means every second hour from 9 to 17.
What happens if I set both day of month and day of week?
In standard cron the job runs when either matches. For example, 0 0 13 * 5 runs on the 13th of every month and also on every Friday, not only on Friday the 13th.
Which time zone does cron use?
The time zone of the server running the job, which is often UTC. The run times shown here are in your local time, so allow for the difference if your server is elsewhere.
Does this support seconds or special strings like @daily?
The generator produces standard five-field expressions, which work with crontab, Kubernetes, GitHub Actions and most schedulers. Six-field formats with seconds, as used by Quartz and Spring, are a different dialect.
Reading cron syntax
Cron has scheduled recurring jobs on Unix systems since the 1970s, and its compact five-field notation has been adopted far beyond: container orchestrators, CI services, cloud schedulers and application frameworks all use it. Each field restricts one unit of time, and a job runs at every minute that satisfies all the fields.
Reading an expression from left to right, ask “at which minutes, of which hours, on which days?”. 30 2 * * 1 is minute 30 of hour 2, on any day of the month, in any month, when the weekday is Monday: 02:30 every Monday. The most common mistake is leaving the minute field as an asterisk when a specific hour is intended, which makes the job run sixty times during that hour.
Because a small typo can produce a very different schedule, always verify an expression against its next run times before deploying it.