Cron Expression Explainer

Paste a crontab schedule and get a plain-English translation plus the next run times, in your local time zone.

minute
hour
day of month
month
day of week

Cron syntax cheat sheet

Each of the five fields accepts: a number (30), a list (0,15,30), a range (9-17), a step (*/5 = every 5th value), any (*) or combinations like 0-30/10. Weekday names (MON) and month names (JAN) work in most crontabs. A classic gotcha: day-of-month and day-of-week combine with OR when both are restricted — a job with 0 0 1 * 1 runs on the 1st and every Monday.

Frequently asked questions

What time zone do cron runs use?

Usually the server's local time. This explainer shows next runs in your browser's time zone — if the server lives elsewhere, account for the difference (our Time Zone Converter helps).

What about @daily or @reboot?

Those are shorthand macros (@hourly = 0 * * * *, @daily = 0 0 * * *, @weekly, @monthly, @yearly). Type the expanded 5-field form here to see the details.