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Cron Expression Parser

Explain a cron expression in plain English and list its next run times in your time zone or UTC.

Runs locally, never uploaded

Options

Time zone

Cron expression

Result

Result appears here

What it does

The cron expression parser explains a cron schedule in plain language and lists the next times it will run. Cron syntax is compact but easy to get wrong: is 0 9 * * 1-5 nine o’clock on weekdays, or every minute of nine o’clock? Paste an expression here before you deploy it and check exactly when it fires.

Each of the five fields is also broken down into the exact values it allows, which makes mistakes in ranges and steps easy to spot.

How to use

  1. Type a cron expression into the input, or click Sample.
  2. Read the description and the field table. Errors point at the field and column that are wrong, for example an hour of 24.
  3. Choose Local time or UTC for the upcoming runs, and how many runs to show.

Cron syntax

A cron expression has five fields separated by spaces:

┌───────────── 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, 0 and 7 are Sunday)
│ │ │ │ │
* * * * *
SymbolMeaningExample
*every value* in the hour field = every hour
,a list1,15 = on the 1st and 15th
-a rangeMON-FRI = Monday to Friday
/a step*/15 = every 15 minutes

Shortcuts are also accepted: @hourly, @daily (or @midnight), @weekly, @monthly and @yearly (or @annually).

Examples

ExpressionRuns
*/5 * * * *every 5 minutes
0 * * * *at the start of every hour
0 9 * * 1-5at 09:00 on weekdays
30 2 1 * *at 02:30 on the first day of each month
0 0 * * 0at midnight every Sunday

FAQ

› Which cron format does this tool use?

The standard five-field Unix (Vixie) cron format used by crontab, Kubernetes CronJobs, GitHub Actions and most schedulers. Six-field formats with seconds (Quartz, Spring) are not supported.

› What happens when both day of month and day of week are set?

Standard cron runs the job when either one matches. For example 0 0 1,15 * 5 runs on the 1st and 15th of every month and on every Friday.

› Why are the run times different on my server?

Cron uses the time zone of the machine or service that runs it. GitHub Actions and most cloud schedulers use UTC, so switch Time zone to UTC to see what they will do.

› Are names like MON or JAN allowed?

Yes. Months accept JAN–DEC and days of the week accept SUN–SAT, in any letter case. Sunday can be written as 0 or 7.