Cron Expression Parser

Paste a cron expression and get a plain-English explanation plus a preview of its next 5 run times.

Standard 5-field format: minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week.

The 5 fields

Minute, hour, day-of-month, month, day-of-week.

* means "every value." */5 means "every 5 units." 1-5 is a range. 1,3,5 is a list. Day-of-week runs 0 (Sunday) through 6 (Saturday).

A quick example

*/15 9-17 * * 1-5 means "every 15 minutes, between 9 AM and 5 PM, Monday through Friday." Try the presets dropdown for more common schedules.

Common questions

What cron format does this use?

The standard 5-field Unix cron format: minute (0-59), hour (0-23), day-of-month (1-31), month (1-12), and day-of-week (0-6, where 0 is Sunday). Some systems add a seconds field or use 7 for Sunday, this tool follows the common 5-field convention.

What happens if both day-of-month and day-of-week are set?

Standard cron semantics: if both fields are restricted (not *), the schedule matches when EITHER condition is true, not both. This trips a lot of people up, it's the same behavior as real crontab.

What time zone are the next-run times in?

Your browser's local time zone. If the job actually runs on a server in a different time zone, the real run times will differ.