Cron Expression Parser

Read any cron expression in plain language and see exactly when it will next run.

Cron expression

Five fields: minute, hour, day of month, month, day of week. Shortcuts such as @daily also work.

What it means

Every 15 minutes

Field breakdown
*/15Minute
*Hour
*Day of month
*Month
*Day of week
Next 5 runs

This expression never matches a real date.

Times are shown in your device's timezone. Servers usually run cron in UTC, so check before relying on these.

How to Read a Cron Expression

1

Paste the expression

Five fields separated by spaces, or one of the shortcuts such as @daily or @hourly. The presets below the box cover the schedules people set most often.

2

Read the plain description

The tool turns the expression into a sentence, so you can check it says what you meant before it goes into a crontab or a pipeline definition.

3

Check the next runs

The next five run times are calculated from your clock. This is the real test: a schedule that reads correctly but fires at the wrong time shows up immediately here.

Features

Plain language description of any five field expression
Next five run times calculated from your current clock
Ranges, steps, lists and wildcards all supported
Month and weekday names such as jan and mon accepted
Shortcuts including @daily, @hourly, @weekly and @monthly
Field by field breakdown so you can see what each position does
Clear errors for unsupported syntax rather than silent guesses
Runs entirely in your browser, free and with no sign-up

Frequently Asked Questions

In order: minute, hour, day of month, month and day of week. An asterisk means every value, and cron runs the job when all of the fields match the current time.

It is a step. Written as */15 in the minute field it means every fifteenth minute, so at 0, 15, 30 and 45. Written as 10-20/2 it steps by two within that range.

This is the trap. When both are restricted, cron runs the job if either matches, not both. So 0 0 1 * mon fires on the first of the month and on every Monday.

Both. Most implementations accept 0 and 7 for Sunday, and this tool normalises 7 to 0 so the description and the run times are consistent either way.

Your device's timezone, because that is what the browser knows. Servers usually run cron in UTC, so confirm the server's timezone before trusting a schedule that matters.

Characters such as L, W and the hash are extensions supported by Quartz and some other schedulers, but not by standard cron. They are rejected rather than being silently ignored, which would give you wrong run times.

Yes. Both use standard five field cron, and both run in UTC, so read the run times with that in mind.

Yes, completely free with no sign-up.

Need a Custom Tool or Application?

We build production-grade web applications, SaaS platforms, and developer tools. Let's talk about your project.

or book a free call