What are the five cron fields?

In order: minute (0-59), hour (0-23), day of month (1-31), month (1-12) and day of week (0-6, where 0 is Sunday). An asterisk means 'every'.

A step value. In the minute field, */5 means 'every 5 minutes'. The same pattern works in other fields too.

Developer Tools

Cron Expression Generator

Build and understand cron schedules with presets and a plain-English summary.

Free foreverRuns in your browserNo sign-up

Presets

Minute

0-59

Hour

0-23

Day (month)

1-31

Month

1-12

Day (week)

0-6

Cron expression

0 9 * * 1-5

Runs at 09:00 on Monday to Friday.

About the Cron Expression Generator

Cron expressions describe repeating schedules using five fields: minute, hour, day of month, month and day of week. They power scheduled jobs on servers and CI systems.

This tool lets you start from a common preset or edit each field directly, and it shows the resulting expression along with a plain-English summary of when it runs.

Everything is calculated in your browser, ready to paste into your crontab or scheduler.

Key features

Common presets: hourly, daily, weekdays, weekly, monthly
Editable minute, hour, day, month and weekday fields
Live plain-English description
One-click copy of the expression

How to use

1Pick a preset or edit the five fields.
2Read the plain-English summary to confirm the schedule.
3Copy the cron expression into your crontab or scheduler.

Frequently asked questions

What are the five cron fields?: In order: minute (0-59), hour (0-23), day of month (1-31), month (1-12) and day of week (0-6, where 0 is Sunday). An asterisk means 'every'.
What does */5 mean?: A step value. In the minute field, */5 means 'every 5 minutes'. The same pattern works in other fields too.