⏰ Cron Expression Generator
Generate cron expressions from a schedule: every N minutes, daily at a time, weekly on weekdays, monthly on day N.
*/5 * * * * Times shown in your local timezone.
About this tool
A cron expression tells a scheduler — crontab, Kubernetes CronJob, GitHub Actions, AWS EventBridge — exactly when a job should run. The format is five fields: minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week. Remembering the order and the step/range syntax under pressure is error-prone, so this generator lets you describe the schedule in plain terms and copies the correct expression.
Pick a frequency, set the numbers, and the expression updates live. Examples: every 5 minutes → */5 * * * *; daily at 09:30 → 30 9 * * *; weekdays at 06:00 → 0 6 * * 1-5; first of every month at midnight → 0 0 1 * *.
For each expression the tool also shows a plain-English description and the next five run times in your local timezone, so you can confirm the schedule behaves the way you expect before pasting it into a crontab or CI config. Need to go the other way? Drop the expression into the cron explainer.
FAQ
What does */5 mean? ›
It is step syntax: run every 5 units of the field it appears in. In the minute field, */5 means minutes 0, 5, 10, 15, …, 55 — so the job fires twelve times an hour. */10 in the hour field means every tenth hour (0, 10, 20).
Why is my monthly job capped at day 28? ›
Not every month has days 29, 30, or 31. A job scheduled for the 31st silently skips February, April, June, September, and November. The Monthly preset caps at 28 so the job always runs. If you genuinely want the last day of the month, use Custom with a tool that supports the L modifier, or schedule it for the 28th and accept the approximation.
Do day-of-month and day-of-week combine with AND or OR? ›
In standard Vixie cron they are OR-ed: if either field matches, the job runs. So 0 0 13 * 5 fires at midnight on Friday the 13th and on every other Friday too. Quartz and Spring use AND semantics instead — check your scheduler's docs if you are migrating a schedule.
Which timezone do the next-runs use? ›
Your browser's local timezone, the same one your laptop or server would use if cron ran there. Production cron uses the server's system timezone by default; Kubernetes, GitHub Actions, and AWS EventBridge let you set an explicit timezone. Always confirm the timezone in production.