Cron Expression Generator
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Build a cron schedule from simple presets, or paste an expression to decode it into plain English and preview the next run times. No more guessing what star slash five means.
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How Cron Fields Work
- Five fields, minute (0-59), hour (0-23), day of month (1-31), month (1-12), day of week (0-6, Sunday is 0).
- Wildcards, an asterisk means every value for that field.
- Steps and ranges, use star slash 5 for every fifth value and 9-17 for a range.
- Lists, combine values with commas, such as 0,30 for the start and half of each hour.
Why It Matters
- Avoid mistakes, a misread field can run a job 60 times more often than intended.
- Confidence before deploy, plain English plus next run times confirm intent.
- Portable, the standard five-field format works across cron, CI, and cloud schedulers.
- Faster setup, presets cover the most common schedules in one click.
Cron Expression Reference
A standard cron expression has five space-separated fields. Each field accepts a single value, a list, a range, a step, or a wildcard. Use the table below as a quick reference for allowed values.
| Field | Allowed values | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Minute | 0-59 | First field. Minute of the hour. |
| Hour | 0-23 | Second field. 24-hour clock, 0 is midnight. |
| Day of month | 1-31 | Third field. Calendar day of the month. |
| Month | 1-12 | Fourth field. Many crons also accept JAN-DEC. |
| Day of week | 0-6 | Fifth field. 0 is Sunday. Many crons accept 7 as Sunday too, and SUN-SAT names. |
Special characters can appear in any field to express more than one value:
| Character | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
* | Any value (every value the field allows) | * * * * * runs every minute |
, | List of specific values | 0,30 * * * * at minute 0 and 30 |
- | Range of values, inclusive | 0 9-17 * * * hourly from 9am to 5pm |
/ | Step within a range or wildcard | */15 * * * * every 15 minutes |
Common Cron Examples
Copy any of these into the field above to see the plain-English description and next run times.
| Expression | Meaning |
|---|---|
* * * * * | Every minute |
*/5 * * * * | Every 5 minutes |
0 * * * * | Every hour, at minute 0 |
0 0 * * * | Every day at midnight |
0 9 * * 1-5 | 9am on weekdays (Monday to Friday) |
30 2 * * 0 | 2:30am every Sunday |
0 0 1 * * | Midnight on the 1st of every month |
0 0 1 1 * | Midnight on January 1st (yearly) |
If you rely on scheduled jobs for backups, reports, or sync tasks, broken or silent cron failures can cost you days of data. Our website maintenance services include monitored automation so a missed run never goes unnoticed.
Next steps
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