Stop guessing what `0 0 1 * *` means. Translate complex cron expressions into plain English, visually dissect the scheduling segments, and calculate the exact next execution times instantly.
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If you work with Linux, servers, cloud infrastructure, or background jobs, you will inevitably encounter Cron. It is the absolute standard for time-based job scheduling in Unix-like computer operating systems.
However, its syntax is notoriously unforgiving and difficult to read at a glance.
Does 0 12 * * 1 mean every day at 12:01, or every Monday at 12:00? (Spoiler: It's every Monday at 12:00 PM).
Our Cron Expression Explainer eliminates the guesswork.
A standard cron expression consists of exactly five fields separated by spaces:
Cron supports powerful modifiers to create complex schedules:
* (Asterisk): Matches all values for that field. (e.g., * in the hour field means "every hour")., (Comma): Separates items of a list. (e.g., MON,WED,FRI in the day-of-week field).- (Hyphen): Defines a range. (e.g., 9-17 in the hour field means 9 AM to 5 PM)./ (Slash): Specifies step values. (e.g., */15 in the minute field means "every 15 minutes").Use the interactive tool above to experiment with these modifiers and instantly see how they affect the next 5 execution dates!
Five asterisks represent the default schedule, triggering the cron job every single minute of every hour, day, month, and day of the week.
Standard Unix cron uses 5 fields (minute, hour, day-of-month, month, day-of-week). Some schedulers (like Spring or AWS) use a 6-field format to include seconds or years.
Set the 5th field (day-of-week) to '1-5' (Monday to Friday) or 'MON-FRI' depending on your operating system's cron daemon.
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Create Free AccountInstantly convert Unix timestamps (epoch) to human-readable dates in local and UTC time, and vice-versa.
Instantly translate a messy docker run terminal command into a clean docker-compose.yml file.
Visual Linux file permissions calculator. Convert between symbolic and numeric notations.