Cron Expression Generator & Explainer

What is a Cron Expression?

A cron expression is a string comprising five or six fields separated by white space that represents a set of times. It is used in systems like Unix-like operating systems (with the cron daemon) and modern cloud task schedulers like GitHub Actions or AWS EventBridge to run a script, command, or application at a specified interval.

How to Use This Tool

1. To Explain a Cron: Paste your existing cron string into the top input. The tool will instantly translate it into human-readable text and show the next 5 execution times.
2. To Generate a Cron: Use the interactive dropdowns (Minute, Hour, Day, Month, Weekday) to visually construct a schedule. The resulting cron string will update automatically.
3. Timezones: The "Upcoming Executions" list is automatically calculate based on your current local browser timezone, making it easy to test when jobs will actually run for you.

Standard Cron Format

The standard format supported by most Linux environments and cloud providers consists of 5 fields:

┌───────────── minute (0 - 59) │ ┌───────────── hour (0 - 23) │ │ ┌───────────── day of the month (1 - 31) │ │ │ ┌───────────── month (1 - 12) │ │ │ │ ┌───────────── day of the week (0 - 6) (Sunday to Saturday) │ │ │ │ │ * * * * *

Special Characters

• * (Asterisk) — Represents all possible values for a field (e.g., "every minute").
• , (Comma) — Separates items containing a list (e.g., MON,WED,FRI).
• - (Dash) — Specifies a range of values (e.g., 1-5 for weekdays).
• / (Slash) — Specifies step values. For example, */5 in the minutes field means "every 5 minutes".