Cron Expression Explainer Online — Free Tool
Translate complex 5-field cron scheduling expressions into clear, plain English sentences.
Cron expression (5 fields)
minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week
Summary
Every 5 minutes
Breakdown
Minute
*/5
every, every 5
Hour
*
Every
Day of month
*
Every
Month
*
Every
Day of week
*
Every
Examples
Privacy note: All processing happens entirely in your browser. No data is sent to our servers.
About this tool
Cron schedules jobs with five or six fields: minute, hour, day of month, month, day of week—and sometimes seconds. Paste an expression to see plain-English timing and next run times.
Avoid off-by-one errors when wiring Linux crontab, Kubernetes CronJob, or cloud schedulers.
Common use cases
- Validating crontab before deploy
- Documenting scheduler configs for ops
- Debugging why a job did not fire
- Learning cron field syntax
How to use
- Paste a cron expression (e.g. 0 9 * * 1-5).
- Read the human-readable description of each field.
- Check listed next execution times if shown.
- Adjust fields and revalidate until timing matches intent.
This page is available at /tools/cron-expression-explainer/.
Understanding the result
- Asterisk (*) means every value in that field.
- Commas list multiple values; hyphens define ranges; slashes define steps.
- Day-of-month and day-of-week can interact—some engines use one or both.
- Timezone for next-run preview is usually server or selected zone—confirm for production.
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FAQ
What does 0 0 * * * mean?
Daily at midnight (00:00) in the scheduler's timezone.
Five vs six fields?
Classic cron has five fields. Some systems add seconds as the first field.
Quartz vs Linux cron?
Quartz supports ? and extra flags. Verify dialect for your platform.
DST issues?
Jobs at local midnight can shift when daylight saving changes. Prefer UTC for critical schedules.