Cron expression explainer
Paste a cron expression to see what it means in plain English and exactly when it runs next, in your timezone.
Every 15 minutes from 09:00 through 17:59, on Monday through Friday.
- Mon, Oct 12, 2026, 09:00
- Mon, Oct 12, 2026, 09:15
- Mon, Oct 12, 2026, 09:30
- Mon, Oct 12, 2026, 09:45
- Mon, Oct 12, 2026, 10:00
- Mon, Oct 12, 2026, 10:15
- Mon, Oct 12, 2026, 10:30
- Mon, Oct 12, 2026, 10:45
- Mon, Oct 12, 2026, 11:00
- Mon, Oct 12, 2026, 11:15
Cron syntax at a glance
┌───────────── minute (0-59) │ ┌─────────── hour (0-23) │ │ ┌───────── day of month (1-31) │ │ │ ┌─────── month (1-12 or JAN-DEC) │ │ │ │ ┌───── day of week (0-6 or SUN-SAT; 7 = Sunday) │ │ │ │ │ * * * * *
| Character | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| * | Every value | * in the hour field = every hour |
| , | A list of values | 1,15 in day of month = the 1st and the 15th |
| - | A range | 1-5 in day of week = Monday through Friday |
| / | A step | */10 in minute = every 10 minutes |
| @daily, @hourly, @weekly, @monthly, @yearly | Shortcuts | @daily = 0 0 * * * |
Common cron schedules
Frequently asked questions
What are the five fields in a cron expression?
In order: minute (0-59), hour (0-23), day of month (1-31), month (1-12 or JAN-DEC) and day of week (0-6 or SUN-SAT, where 0 and 7 are both Sunday). An asterisk means "every value" for that field.
What does */5 mean?
A slash sets a step. */5 in the minute field means every 5th minute starting at 0: 0, 5, 10 and so on. 10-30/5 would mean 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30.
What happens when both day of month and day of week are set?
Standard cron runs the job when either one matches. 0 9 1 * 1 runs at 09:00 on the 1st of every month and also on every Monday.
Which timezone does cron use?
Classic crontab uses the server clock, which is often UTC. Hosted schedulers let you pick a timezone per job. RunLater stores a timezone on each scheduled request and handles daylight saving changes for you.
Does this tool support seconds?
No. It follows the standard 5-field format used by crontab, GitHub Actions, Vercel and RunLater. Some libraries (Quartz, node-cron) add a leading seconds field; drop it to read the schedule here.
Is the explainer free?
Yes. It runs in your browser and sends nothing to a server. If you want something to call a URL on that schedule, RunLater does that from $15 a month after a 14-day trial.
More detail: the cron expressions guide and timezone handling in the RunLater docs.
Need something to call a URL on this schedule?
RunLater is a hosted cron for HTTP requests. Give it a URL, method, headers, body and a cron expression or exact time. It sends the request on time in your timezone, retries failures with backoff and keeps a log of every response. No server or crontab to look after.