Cron Expression Visualizer

Paste any cron expression below to see exactly when it runs. This free cron expression visualizer turns crontab syntax into a plain-English description, a weekly run timeline, and the next five run times in your local timezone or UTC. Everything is calculated in your browser, so nothing is ever sent to a server.

What is a cron expression?

A cron expression is a short, five-field string that describes a repeating schedule. It is used by Unix and Linux cron, by CI pipelines, and by WordPress cron to decide when a task should run. The fields, in order, are minute, hour, day of the month, month, and day of the week.

How to read the timeline

The heatmap shows a typical week at a glance. Each row is a day of the week and each column is an hour of the day. A coloured cell means the schedule runs in that hour, and a stronger colour means it runs more than once in that hour. The next five run times below give you exact dates, and the Local and UTC toggle lets you check when a server set to UTC will actually fire in your own time.

Cron syntax cheat sheet

A cron expression has five fields separated by spaces:

* * * * *
minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week

Minute	0 to 59
Hour	0 to 23
Day of month	1 to 31
Month	1 to 12, or names like JAN to DEC
Day of week	0 to 6 where 0 is Sunday, or names like SUN to SAT

Special characters work in every field. An asterisk means every value, a comma separates a list such as 1,15,30, a hyphen sets a range such as 9-17, and a slash sets a step such as */5 for every fifth value.

Common cron examples

*/5 * * * *	Every 5 minutes
0 * * * *	Every hour, on the hour
0 0 * * *	Every day at midnight
30 9 * * 1-5	At 9:30 AM on weekdays
0 0 1 * *	Midnight on the first of every month
0 0 * * 0	Midnight every Sunday

Frequently asked questions

What do the five cron fields mean?

In order they are minute, hour, day of the month, month, and day of the week. A value in each field tells cron when that part of the schedule should match.

What does the asterisk mean in a cron expression?

An asterisk means every possible value for that field. For example, an asterisk in the hour field means the schedule can run during any hour of the day.

How do day-of-month and day-of-week work together?

When both the day-of-month and the day-of-week fields are restricted, cron treats them as an OR. The job runs when either condition matches, so 0 0 13 * 5 runs on every Friday and also on the 13th of every month.

Does this tool actually run my cron job?

No. It only visualizes the schedule and calculates the next run times. All of the work happens in your browser and nothing is sent to a server.

What timezone are the run times shown in?

By default the run times use your local timezone. You can switch to UTC with the toggle, which is useful when your server clock is set to UTC.