Cron Expression Parser
Inspect five numeric cron fields and preview the next five runs in an editable time zone.
Enter five numeric cron fields, choose “IANA time zone”, then use “Recalculate”. The description lists allowed field values and the selected zone.
Enter five numeric cron fields, choose “IANA time zone”, then use “Recalculate”. The description lists allowed field values and the selected zone. Method and limits
Presets
Browser zone unavailable; using UTC.
Calculated from:
Method and limits
Method and limits
Numeric five-field cron uses cron-parser 5.4.0: minute 0–59, hour 0–23, day 1–31, month 1–12, weekday 0–7 (7 means Sunday). Supported forms are *, integers, lists, nonwrapping ranges and positive steps: */n, a-b/n and a/n through the field maximum. Day/month wildcard steps begin at 1. Finite sets are normalized before search. Restricted day-of-month and weekday combine with OR; month and time still use AND. Names, macros, Quartz and seconds fields are rejected. Five next instants are searched strictly after the displayed clock, up to eight calendar years. Impossible dates are errors; sparse/limited searches are explicit. Choose an IANA zone or UTC. DST follows this library preview: fixed hours shift through gaps and do not repeat at fall-back, while wildcard hours can show both offsets. This is a preview, not server installation or scheduling assurance.
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Expression 256 ASCII characters; each field 64; five runs within eight calendar years; search deadline 5 s.
Copied
Copy failed. Select the result and copy it manually.
About Cron Expression Parser
The page splits your expression on whitespace and insists on exactly five fields; anything else shows the invalid-expression message and clears the results. The five parts are then shown in labelled boxes - Minute, Hour, Day, Month, Weekday - so you can see which value landed where, which is where most cron mistakes actually are.
A real cron daemon uses the time zone of the machine it runs on, so a schedule that reads correctly here can fire at a different clock time on the server. Check the server's zone before trusting the list for a deployment.
*/5 * * * *; UTC; 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z → 00:05, 00:10, 00:15, 00:20, 00:25
Versioned technical method; no calendar or legal reference year applies.
Use Cases
How to use
Enter five fields in “Input”, starting with */5 * * * *.
Enter five numeric cron fields, choose “IANA time zone”, then use “Recalculate”. The description lists allowed field values and the selected zone.
Read the allowed field values and “IANA time zone”; unrestricted fields show “Every”.
Look at the Minute, Hour, Day, Month and Weekday boxes to confirm each value landed in the field you intended.
Click one of the ten examples, from every minute to first day of the month, to load a known-good expression and adapt it.
Use “Copy” to copy the five-field expression. Check the target scheduler and time zone before installing it.
Use “Clear” to empty the draft and result; “Cancel” stops current work.
Pro Tips
- Read the five boxes under the field before the description. Minute, Hour, Day, Month, Weekday in that order is where a schedule that is one field out shows itself immediately.
- Write @daily and friends out in full. The parser wants five numeric fields, so use 0 0 * * * for @daily, 0 * * * * for @hourly and 0 0 1 * * for @monthly; there is no equivalent for @reboot.
- Click an example first, then edit one field. The ten presets cover every common shape, and changing a single value in a known-good expression is far less error-prone than typing five fields from scratch.
- Review warnings and the output before copying. A successful transform is not proof of compatibility with your application.
Troubleshooting
The page says the expression is invalid.
It requires exactly five whitespace-separated fields. Six fields, which some schedulers use for seconds, a nickname such as @daily, or a stray space inside a comma list will all fail this check. Count the fields, and write nicknames out in numeric form.
No next run times are listed even though the expression looks fine.
Numeric five-field cron uses cron-parser 5.4.0: minute 0–59, hour 0–23, day 1–31, month 1–12, weekday 0–7 (7 means Sunday). Supported forms are *, integers, lists, nonwrapping ranges and positive steps: */n, a-b/n and a/n through the field maximum. Day/month wildcard steps begin at 1. Finite sets are normalized before search. Restricted day-of-month and weekday combine with OR; month and time still use AND. Names, macros, Quartz and seconds fields are rejected. Five next instants are searched strictly after the displayed clock, up to eight calendar years. Impossible dates are errors; sparse/limited searches are explicit. Choose an IANA zone or UTC. DST follows this library preview: fixed hours shift through gaps and do not repeat at fall-back, while wildcard hours can show both offsets. This is a preview, not server installation or scheduling assurance. Expression 256 ASCII characters; each field 64; five runs within eight calendar years; search deadline 5 s.
The listed times do not match when the job actually ran on the server.
Numeric five-field cron uses cron-parser 5.4.0: minute 0–59, hour 0–23, day 1–31, month 1–12, weekday 0–7 (7 means Sunday). Supported forms are *, integers, lists, nonwrapping ranges and positive steps: */n, a-b/n and a/n through the field maximum. Day/month wildcard steps begin at 1. Finite sets are normalized before search. Restricted day-of-month and weekday combine with OR; month and time still use AND. Names, macros, Quartz and seconds fields are rejected. Five next instants are searched strictly after the displayed clock, up to eight calendar years. Impossible dates are errors; sparse/limited searches are explicit. Choose an IANA zone or UTC. DST follows this library preview: fixed hours shift through gaps and do not repeat at fall-back, while wildcard hours can show both offsets. This is a preview, not server installation or scheduling assurance. Expression 256 ASCII characters; each field 64; five runs within eight calendar years; search deadline 5 s.
Custom (1-5/2)
Numeric five-field cron uses cron-parser 5.4.0: minute 0–59, hour 0–23, day 1–31, month 1–12, weekday 0–7 (7 means Sunday). Supported forms are *, integers, lists, nonwrapping ranges and positive steps: */n, a-b/n and a/n through the field maximum. Day/month wildcard steps begin at 1. Finite sets are normalized before search. Restricted day-of-month and weekday combine with OR; month and time still use AND. Names, macros, Quartz and seconds fields are rejected. Five next instants are searched strictly after the displayed clock, up to eight calendar years. Impossible dates are errors; sparse/limited searches are explicit. Choose an IANA zone or UTC. DST follows this library preview: fixed hours shift through gaps and do not repeat at fall-back, while wildcard hours can show both offsets. This is a preview, not server installation or scheduling assurance. Expression 256 ASCII characters; each field 64; five runs within eight calendar years; search deadline 5 s.
Frequently Asked Questions
A scheduler on Unix-like systems that runs commands at fixed times. Each line of a crontab file holds five time fields followed by the command; the daemon wakes every minute and runs whatever matches. The five fields are minute, hour, day of month, month and day of week, in that order, which is what this page parses.
Every minute of every hour of every day. A star means no restriction on that field, so with all five unrestricted the expression matches every minute the daemon checks. It is the most frequent schedule cron can express; anything more often needs a different tool, because cron's resolution is one minute.
5 means minute five of each hour, once per hour. */5 means every fifth minute: 0, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55. The description lists those allowed minute values for */5 and only 5 for a fixed minute; it does not produce an interval sentence.
No. The parser requires exactly five whitespace-separated fields of digits and the *, comma, hyphen and slash operators. Nicknames such as @daily, @hourly and @reboot, and the three-letter forms JAN and MON that many crons accept, are not recognised here; write the numeric equivalent instead - @daily is 0 0 * * *.
Numeric five-field cron uses cron-parser 5.4.0: minute 0–59, hour 0–23, day 1–31, month 1–12, weekday 0–7 (7 means Sunday). Supported forms are *, integers, lists, nonwrapping ranges and positive steps: */n, a-b/n and a/n through the field maximum. Day/month wildcard steps begin at 1. Finite sets are normalized before search. Restricted day-of-month and weekday combine with OR; month and time still use AND. Names, macros, Quartz and seconds fields are rejected.
Five next instants are searched strictly after the displayed clock, up to eight calendar years. Impossible dates are errors; sparse/limited searches are explicit. Choose an IANA zone or UTC. DST follows this library preview: fixed hours shift through gaps and do not repeat at fall-back, while wildcard hours can show both offsets. This is a preview, not server installation or scheduling assurance.