Cron Expression Helper

Paste a cron expression to see what it means in plain English and exactly when it will run next.

FreeNo sign-upRuns in your browserMobile-friendly

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What does the Cron Expression Helper do?

Cron schedules have five fields: minute, hour, day of month, month and day of week. The helper validates each field (supporting lists, ranges, steps like */15, names like MON or JAN, and macros like @daily), describes the schedule in words and calculates the next ten run times.

It follows standard cron behaviour where, if both day-of-month and day-of-week are restricted, the job runs when either matches. Six-field expressions with seconds are accepted by ignoring the first field.

How to use the Cron Expression Helper

  1. Type a cron expression or click a preset.
  2. Read the plain-English description and field table.
  3. Check the next run times.
  4. Copy the expression into your crontab, CI or scheduler.

Examples

Business hours

*/15 9-17 * * 1-5 → every 15 minutes from 09:00 to 17:45, Monday to Friday.

Monthly report

0 6 1 * * → 06:00 on the first day of every month.

Common use cases

  • Linux crontab jobs
  • GitHub Actions and CI schedules
  • Cloud schedulers and serverless cron triggers
  • Backups and maintenance tasks

Features and benefits

  • Private by design — your data is processed on your device and never uploaded.
  • Free with no account, no watermark and no usage limits.
  • Works on phones, tablets and desktops in any modern browser.

Limitations to know

  • Run times are shown in your browser’s time zone; many servers and CI systems run cron in UTC.
  • Non-standard extensions such as L, W and # are not supported.

Frequently asked questions

What does */5 mean?

Every 5 units — in the minute field, every 5 minutes.

Is Sunday 0 or 7?

Both are accepted.

Why do my jobs run at the wrong time?

The server may use UTC. Convert times with the Time Zone Converter.

Embed this tool on your website

Add the free Cron Expression Helper to your blog or website. Paste the code into your page’s HTML; the tool runs in your visitors’ browsers and stays up to date automatically. Please keep the credit line below the tool.

Free to use on any website. The tool runs inside an iframe served from viptools.pk; nothing your visitors type is sent to your site or ours. Preview the embedded version.

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