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Cron expression translator.
Know exactly when your job will run before it fires at 3 AM by mistake. Paste a cron expression: you get it in plain English, the next 10 run times in your own time zone (or UTC, which is what GitHub Actions and AWS use), and a field-by-field breakdown. It reads standard 5-field cron, Quartz and AWS EventBridge, says which one it assumed, and warns you about the day-of-month OR day-of-week trap.
- Plain English, not a syntax chart
- Next 10 runs in your time zone
- Standard, Quartz + AWS
- Shareable link
Your cron expression
Standard: minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week. Quartz adds seconds first (and an optional year). AWS takes cron(...).
Common schedules
Field by field
| Field | Value | Means |
|---|
How to read a cron expression
Standard cron has five fields, left to right: minute (0-59), hour (0-23), day of month (1-31), month (1-12 or JAN-DEC) and day of week (0-7 or SUN-SAT, where both 0 and 7 are Sunday).
*means every value,,separates a list (1,15),-is a range (9-17) and/is a step (*/15= every 15th value starting from the lowest).- The day trap: in standard cron, if you restrict both day of month and day of week, the job runs when either matches.
0 0 1 * 1runs on the 1st and on every Monday, not only on Mondays that are the 1st (crontab(5)). This page tells you when that applies. - Quartz (Java, Spring) puts seconds first and allows an optional year, numbers day of week 1-7 with 1 = Sunday, and needs
?in one of the two day fields. It addsL(last),W(nearest weekday) and#(nth weekday of the month) (Quartz CronTrigger tutorial). - AWS EventBridge uses six fields with the year last, the same 1-7 day numbering, requires
?in one day field, and runs in UTC (AWS docs).
Next run times are computed in your browser from the expression, in your device's time zone or UTC. Around daylight-saving changes, real cron daemons differ in how they handle the skipped or repeated hour, so check those dates by hand. Sources checked Oct 23, 2026.
FAQ
What is the cron expression for every 5 minutes?
*/5 * * * * in standard cron (Linux, GitHub Actions, Kubernetes). In Quartz it is 0 */5 * * * ?, and in AWS EventBridge cron(0/5 * * * ? *).
What is the cron expression for every hour?
0 * * * * runs at minute 0 of every hour. 0 */2 * * * runs every 2 hours, 0 */6 * * * every 6 hours.
What time zone does cron use?
A classic crontab runs in the system's local time zone. GitHub Actions schedules run in UTC by default and AWS EventBridge scheduled rules run in UTC, so convert before you pick the hour. Switch the next-runs list above to UTC to check.
Can cron run every 30 seconds?
Standard cron cannot go below one minute. Quartz can (*/30 * * * * ?). GitHub Actions' shortest schedule is every 5 minutes and EventBridge does not support rates faster than 1 minute.
Why did my GitHub Actions cron run late?
GitHub documents that the schedule event can be delayed during periods of high load, and schedules run in UTC. A job at 0 9 * * * runs at 9:00 UTC, which is 5:00 AM in New York during daylight saving time.
What does ? mean in a cron expression?
It means "no specific value" and only exists in Quartz and AWS cron, in the day-of-month or day-of-week field. You must use it in one of them so the two day fields do not conflict.
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