Cron expression explainer
Paste a cron expression to see when it runs, in plain English, and its next 5 run times. It reads standard five-field crontab, the format Linux cron, Kubernetes CronJobs and GitHub Actions schedules use. Times are in UTC.
* * * * *
Runs every minute, every day.
- Oct 24, 2026, 20:27 UTC
- Oct 24, 2026, 20:28 UTC
- Oct 24, 2026, 20:29 UTC
- Oct 24, 2026, 20:30 UTC
- Oct 24, 2026, 20:31 UTC
Common cron expressions
| Expression | Runs |
|---|---|
* * * * * | every minute |
*/5 * * * * | every 5 minutes |
0 * * * * | at the start of every hour |
0 0 * * * | every day at midnight |
30 2 * * 1-5 | at 02:30 on weekdays |
0 9 * * 1 | every Monday at 09:00 |
0 0 1 * * | at midnight on the first of every month |
0 0 1 1 * | once a year, at midnight on January 1 |
Know when a cron job stops running
A job that fails, or is never scheduled, makes no noise. With a cron job monitor, the job pings Uptimely each time it finishes, and you are alerted when a ping does not arrive on schedule.
From a script or an agent
curl "https://getuptimely.com/api/tools/cron?expr=0%209%20*%20*%201" returns the explanation and the next runs as JSON, or as Markdown with Accept: text/markdown. No API key. API documentation.
What are the five fields of a cron expression?
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 mean Sunday). Each field takes a single value, a list such as 1,15, a range such as 1-5, a step such as */15, or * for every value.
How do I run a cron job every 5 minutes?
Use */5 * * * *. The */5 in the minute field means every fifth minute starting from 0, so the job runs at :00, :05, :10 and so on, every hour of every day.
What happens when I set both the day of month and the day of week?
Cron runs the job on any day that matches either field, not only on days that match both. So 0 0 13 * 5 runs at midnight on the 13th of every month and on every Friday, not only on Friday the 13th.
Why does my expression have six fields?
A leading seconds field (and the ?, L, W and # symbols) comes from Quartz and Spring schedulers. Standard cron, Kubernetes CronJobs and GitHub Actions use five fields with minute first. This tool reads the standard form.
How do I know if my cron job stopped running?
A cron job that fails silently, or stops being scheduled, produces no error anywhere. A heartbeat monitor fixes that: the job pings a URL each time it finishes, and Uptimely alerts you when a ping does not arrive on schedule.