Cron Generator
Build cron expressions from presets, see them explained in plain English, and preview the next run times.
At 09:00, on Monday through Friday
6/10/2026, 9:00:00 AM 6/11/2026, 9:00:00 AM 6/12/2026, 9:00:00 AM 6/15/2026, 9:00:00 AM 6/16/2026, 9:00:00 AM
About the Cron Generator
Cron expressions schedule recurring jobs on Unix systems, CI pipelines, Kubernetes CronJobs, and most cloud platforms. Five fields, separated by spaces, define when something runs: minute, hour, day of month, month, and day of week. The syntax is compact and easy to get subtly wrong, which is why people have been double checking their crontabs for fifty years.
This tool works in both directions. Start from a preset and adjust it, or paste an existing expression to see what it actually does, written out in plain English with the next five run times in your local timezone. Seeing the concrete run times is the fastest way to catch the classic mistakes: a job that runs every minute instead of every hour, or one scheduled for day 1 of the month and Monday, which fires on both rather than when they coincide.
The field reference, left to right: minute (0 to 59), hour (0 to 23), day of month (1 to 31), month (1 to 12), day of week (0 to 6, where 0 is Sunday). Each field accepts a value, a range like 1-5, a list like 1,15, a step like */10, or * for every value.
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Frequently asked questions
What do the five fields mean?
In order: minute (0 to 59), hour (0 to 23), day of month (1 to 31), month (1 to 12), day of week (0 to 6, Sunday is 0). An asterisk means every value. So "0 9 * * 1-5" means 09:00 on weekdays.
What does */5 mean?
A step. */5 in the minute field means every 5 minutes: at minute 0, 5, 10, and so on. Steps can also apply to ranges: 9-17/2 in the hour field means every 2 hours from 9 to 17.
What happens when both day of month and day of week are set?
Standard cron runs the job when either matches, not both. "0 0 1 * 1" runs at midnight on the 1st of every month and on every Monday. This surprises almost everyone, so check the next run preview.
Which timezone are the next run times in?
Your browser timezone, since that is usually what you are reasoning about. Remember that the server running the job uses its own timezone, often UTC. The expression itself has no timezone; the system running it decides.
Does this support seconds or @daily shortcuts?
The tool handles the standard five field format. Six field formats with seconds (used by Quartz and some schedulers) and shortcuts like @daily or @reboot are system specific extensions; check what your scheduler supports.