Cron Expression Generator

Common schedules

Minute0–59

Value

Hour0–23

Value

Day of month1–31

Month1–12 (or jan–dec)

Day of week0–6 (Sun=0, or sun–sat)

Start

End

Cron expression

Edit directly to override the form. The form re-takes control when you pick a preset or change a field.

In plain English

At 9:00 AM on weekdays (Monday through Friday).

Next 5 fire times (UTC)

2026-06-05T09:00:00Z
2026-06-08T09:00:00Z
2026-06-09T09:00:00Z
2026-06-10T09:00:00Z
2026-06-11T09:00:00Z

The Cron Expression Generator builds a standard 5-field cron string from a form, decodes what it means in plain English, and previews the next 5 times it will fire. Pick each field — minute, hour, day-of-month, month, day-of-week — as Any (*), Specific, List, Range, or Step (*/N). Or paste an existing expression and the tool reverses it. Common presets are one click: every minute, every 15 minutes, hourly, daily at midnight, weekdays at 9 AM, weekly on Sunday at 2 AM, monthly on the 1st, yearly on Jan 1. The expression updates live; so does the description; so does the upcoming-fire-time preview. The whole thing runs in your browser — no cron daemon required, no account, nothing sent to a server.

Built by Bob QA by Ben Shipped May 15, 2026

How to use

1
Pick a preset or build from the per-field selectors. Each field has five modes: Any (*), Specific, List, Range, Step.
2
Read the plain-English summary under the expression — confirm it matches what you actually want.
3
Check the next 5 fire times (UTC). If the schedule fires too often or skips a day you expected, adjust the fields.
4
Copy the expression into your crontab, your CI scheduler, or your task runner. Most cron-compatible systems (Linux crond, GitHub Actions, Vercel Cron, Cloudflare Cron Triggers, Kubernetes CronJob) accept this same 5-field format.
5
If your scheduler runs in a different timezone than UTC, mentally add or subtract the offset — the preview is always UTC.

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Frequently asked questions

What are the 5 fields, in order?

Minute (0–59), Hour (0–23), Day-of-month (1–31), Month (1–12), Day-of-week (0–6 where 0 and 7 both mean Sunday). They're separated by spaces. So '0 9 * * 1-5' reads: minute 0, hour 9, any day-of-month, any month, days-of-week Monday through Friday — i.e. weekdays at 9 AM.

What does the asterisk (*) mean?

It means 'every valid value for this field.' '* * * * *' is 'every minute of every hour of every day' — the most aggressive schedule a cron line can express. Most fields you don't care about should stay '*'.

What's the */N syntax?

Step. '*/15' in the minute field means 'every 15 minutes' — at minute 0, 15, 30, 45. You can also step within a range: '0-30/10' in the minute field means 'at minute 0, 10, 20, 30.' Step values must be greater than 0.

Day-of-month and day-of-week both restricted — what happens?

Standard cron treats them as OR, not AND. '0 9 1 * 0' fires at 9 AM on the 1st of every month OR every Sunday — whichever applies on a given day. This trips a lot of people up. If you want strict AND ('the 1st of the month, but only if it's a Sunday'), most schedulers don't support it directly — you'd handle it in the job itself.

Can I use names instead of numbers for month and day-of-week?

Yes. 'jan' through 'dec' work for months; 'sun' through 'sat' work for days-of-week. So 'mon-fri' and '1-5' are identical in the day-of-week field. Case doesn't matter. Some non-standard schedulers add aliases like '@hourly' or '@daily' — those aren't part of the 5-field format and this tool doesn't accept them.

What's the smallest interval cron supports?

One minute. Cron doesn't do seconds. If you need sub-minute granularity, you're past cron territory and want something like a job queue, a setInterval loop in a long-running process, or a serverless function triggered by a timer at higher resolution.

Why does my schedule fire at a weird time?

Timezone. Linux crond uses the system local timezone; GitHub Actions and Vercel Cron use UTC; Kubernetes CronJob defaults to UTC. The preview here is always UTC. Convert mentally if your target scheduler runs in a different zone, or — better — write your cron line in UTC and document it.

Does this support 6-field cron with seconds (Quartz)?

No. This generator handles the standard Unix 5-field format. Quartz-style 6-field cron with leading seconds is a different (and incompatible) syntax used by some Java schedulers. Don't paste a Quartz expression in — it'll fail validation.

Is my expression saved anywhere?

No. Parsing, description, and next-run calculation all run in your browser. Nothing is uploaded or logged. You can copy the cron string and paste it into wherever you actually need it.

Day-of-month 30 in February — what happens?

Cron is forgiving — it just won't fire that month. '0 0 30 * *' fires the 30th of January, March, April, May, etc., but skips February entirely. The next-run preview reflects this. If you wrote '0 0 30 2 *' (Feb 30 only), the preview will be empty because no such date exists.

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Cron Expression Generator

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