Cron expression explainer
Paste a five-field cron expression to read it in plain words and see exactly when it will run next.
Five fields: minute, hour, day of month, month, day of week. Macros like @daily work too.
In plain words
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Fields
| Field | Value | Matches | Allowed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Minute | — | — | 0–59 |
| Hour | — | — | 0–23 |
| Day of month | — | — | 1–31 |
| Month | — | — | 1–12, JAN–DEC |
| Day of week | — | — | 0–7, SUN–SAT |
Next runs
Questions people ask
What do the five fields mean?
In order: minute (0–59), hour (0–23), day of the month (1–31), month (1–12 or JAN–DEC) and day of the week (0–7 or SUN–SAT, where both 0 and 7 are Sunday). * means every value, 1-5 a range, 1,15 a list and */15 every 15th value.
What if I set both the day of month and the day of week?
Classic cron runs the job when either matches. 0 0 1 * 5 runs at midnight on the 1st of every month and on every Friday, not only on Fridays that fall on the 1st.
Which time zone does cron use?
The server’s time zone, unless the scheduler lets you set one (for example CRON_TZ, or a time zone field in Kubernetes CronJobs). Many cloud schedulers default to UTC, so check both lists above.