DeveloperUtilityProductivity

Cron Expression Parser

Parse any cron expression into plain English, preview the next 10 execution times, and build expressions field-by-field. Supports standard 5-field crontab syntax.

5-field POSIX
Presets:

Field breakdown

Minute

0

0

Hour

9

9

Day of Month

*

every value

Month

*

every value

Day of Week

1-5

Mon to Fri

Human-readable

At 09:00, Monday through Friday.

Next 10 runs(your local time, 24h)

  • 12026-09-28 09:00in 45 hours
  • 22026-09-29 09:00in 3 days
  • 32026-09-30 09:00in 4 days
  • 42026-10-01 09:00in 5 days
  • 52026-10-02 09:00in 6 days
  • 62026-10-05 09:00in 9 days
  • 72026-10-06 09:00in 10 days
  • 82026-10-07 09:00in 11 days
  • 92026-10-08 09:00in 12 days
  • 102026-10-09 09:00in 13 days

Cron field reference

A standard POSIX cron expression has five space-separated fields. Each field controls one component of the schedule and accepts the same family of special characters listed below.

FieldRangeSpecial charsExample
Minute0–59* , - /*/15
Hour0–23* , - /9-17
Day of month1–31* , - /1,15
Month1–12 or JAN–DEC* , - /MAR-MAY
Day of week0–6 or SUN–SAT (0=Sun)* , - /1-5

Special characters

Cron uses a tiny set of operators to combine values inside a single field. They behave the same way in every field — only the numeric range changes.

*Asterisk — every value

Matches every value in the field. Example: * * * * * runs every minute.

,Comma — list of values

Matches any of the listed values. Example: 0 9,12,18 * * * runs at 09:00, 12:00, and 18:00.

-Hyphen — inclusive range

Matches every value in the range. Example: 0 9 * * 1-5 runs at 09:00 Monday through Friday.

/Slash — step value

Skips by N within a range. Example: */10 * * * * runs every 10 minutes.

Common patterns

  • Every 5 minutes: */5 * * * * — fires at :00, :05, :10, and so on.
  • Hourly at :30: 30 * * * * — once per hour at the half-hour mark.
  • Every weekday at 9am: 0 9 * * 1-5 — Monday through Friday, 09:00 sharp.
  • First of each month at midnight: 0 0 1 * * — perfect for monthly billing or rollups.
  • Every Sunday at 3am: 0 3 * * 0 — quiet maintenance window once per week.

Heads-up — variants beyond the 5-field standard

Some crontab variants add a 6th field for seconds (Quartz, Spring) or a 7th for year. This parser uses the classic 5-field POSIX crontab format, which is what Linux cron, GitHub Actions, and most schedulers use by default. If your scheduler expects 6 or 7 fields, drop the extra leading seconds field (commonly 0) before pasting here.