Cron Expression Parser
Translate a cron expression into plain English and see the next run times. Supports five and six field formats, names and shortcuts. Free.
Cron expression
Five fields: minute, hour, day of month, month, day of week. Six fields if the first one is seconds. Shortcuts like @daily and @hourly work too.
What this tool is for
Five numbers and three asterisks decide when your job runs, and getting them wrong is quiet: the job simply never fires, or fires far more often than intended. This says in plain words what an expression means, breaks it down field by field, and lists the next five run times so you can sanity check it before deploying.
How to use it
- Paste the expression, or start from one of the presets.
- Read the summary and the field breakdown.
- Check the next runs. If they are not what you expected, the expression is wrong, not the schedule.
Frequently asked questions
What do the five fields mean?
Minute, hour, day of month, month, day of week, in that order. A sixth field at the front means seconds, which Quartz and some job runners support but classic crontab does not.
Why does my job run more often than expected?
Usually because both day of month and day of week are set. Standard cron combines those two with OR, not AND, so "0 0 1 * 1" runs on the first of the month and on every Monday. This tool warns when you hit that case.
Which time zone applies?
The next runs here are shown in your browser time zone. The server that actually runs the job usually lives in UTC, so a schedule that looks right locally can fire at a very different hour in production.
What does @daily mean?
It is a shortcut for "0 0 * * *", midnight every day. There are also @hourly, @weekly, @monthly and @yearly. @reboot is different: it runs once at startup and has no schedule.