Cron Expression Generator
Build cron expressions visually: pick minutes, hours, days, months and weekdays. See a plain-language description and the next run times in your time zone.
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What is Cron Expression Generator?
This visual builder creates standard 5-field cron expressions (minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week) for crontab, Kubernetes CronJobs, GitHub Actions, CI pipelines and job schedulers. As you click, it shows the expression, a human-readable description in your language and the next five run times.
How to use Cron Expression Generator
- Start from one of the Common schedules (e.g. Weekdays at 09:00) or build from scratch.
- For each field choose Every, Every N, Specific values or Range and set the values.
- Read the Meaning and check the Next run times; change the Time zone to see when the job runs where your server is.
- Copy the Cron expression.
Example
Common schedule: Weekdays at 09:00
0 9 * * 1-5 At 09:00 AM, Monday through Friday
When to use Cron Expression Generator
Use it when writing a crontab line or a scheduler config and you want to be sure the schedule is right. Remember that cron runs in the server's time zone (Kubernetes and GitHub Actions use UTC by default). For complex syntax such as L, W or #, or 6-field expressions with seconds, use the Cron Expression Parser to check them.
How Cron Expression Generator works
Each field becomes one token: *Every* → *, *Every N* → */N, *Specific values* → a sorted comma list like 1,3,5, *Range* → a-b. The five tokens are joined with spaces. The expression is validated and the next runs are computed with the cron-parser library in the selected IANA time zone (so daylight-saving changes are handled), and the description is produced by cronstrue. Day of week uses 0 = Sunday … 6 = Saturday.
Common Use Cases
- Scheduling a nightly backup at 02:30
- Running a report every weekday morning
- Setting a Kubernetes CronJob or GitHub Actions schedule
- Polling an API every 15 minutes during office hours
FAQs
What do the five fields mean?
In order: minute (0-59), hour (0-23), day of month (1-31), month (1-12) and day of week (0-6, Sunday = 0).
What happens if I set both day of month and day of week?
In standard cron the job runs when either field matches (OR), not only when both match.
Which time zone does my cron job use?
The time zone of the system running it. Most servers, Kubernetes and GitHub Actions use UTC; choose UTC in the Time zone list to preview that.
How do I run something every 5 minutes?
Use */5 * * * * (the Every 5 minutes preset).