Web Server Tools

Cron Expression Builder

Turn a cron expression into plain English, or start from a preset, so you know exactly when a scheduled job will run.

Free & instant No signup How to use FAQ

Cron Expression (minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week)

Not sure what to enter?

Type or paste a five-field cron expression and see, field by field, when the job will actually run.

How do I read a cron expression?

A cron expression has five fields - minute, hour, day of month, month and day of week - separated by spaces. "*/15 9-17 * * 1-5", for example, means every 15 minutes between 9:00 and 17:59, Monday to Friday. This builder explains any expression field by field so you can be sure a job runs when you expect.

How to check a cron schedule

Type or paste a cron expression, or click a preset such as Every 15 min.
Click Explain.
Read the plain-English description and the meaning of each field.
Adjust the expression until the description matches what you want, then copy it.

Related checks

To build a complete crontab with several jobs, use the Crontab Generator.
To check that your scheduled certificate renewal is working, use the SSL Expiry Checker.

Scheduled jobs often handle backups, sitemap generation and certificate renewal. If one of them fails silently, your website can break later - the SSL Expiry Checker and Domain Expiry Checker are a quick way to confirm the renewals your cron jobs are meant to handle are really happening.

Frequently Asked Questions

In order: minute (0-59), hour (0-23), day of the month (1-31), month (1-12) and day of the week (0-6, Sunday = 0). An asterisk means "every", */15 means "every 15th" and 1-5 means a range.

The server's time zone, unless your scheduler lets you set another one. On a server set to UTC, "0 9 * * *" runs at 09:00 UTC - 14:30 in India.

Standard cron runs the job when either one matches, not both. "0 0 1 * 1" runs on the 1st of every month and on every Monday.

Share this tool:

Need a website for your business? Only $599