Cron Expression Builder and Parser
Decode a cron expression into plain English and see the exact next times it will run, with ready made GitHub Actions and crontab output.
Read a cron expression in plain English and see the next times it will actually run.
Schedule
At 09:00, on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.
minute
0
hour
9
day of month
*
month
*
day of week
1-5
Next runs
9/2/2026, 9:00:00 AM
9/3/2026, 9:00:00 AM
9/4/2026, 9:00:00 AM
9/7/2026, 9:00:00 AM
9/8/2026, 9:00:00 AM
9/9/2026, 9:00:00 AM
Times are shown in your own time zone. Most servers run cron in UTC, so check which one your host uses before relying on the hour.
Generating...About the cron expression builder and parser
Cron syntax is five fields of pure convention, and reading one back is genuinely hard. The difference between running at nine every morning and running every minute of the ninth hour is a single character in the wrong place, and the mistake is invisible until the job floods something.
This translates the expression into a sentence and, more usefully, lists the actual next run times. Seeing six real timestamps catches errors that a description alone can hide.
How to use it
- 1Enter a cron expression, or pick a common schedule to start from.
- 2Read the plain English description.
- 3Check the next run times against what you expect.
- 4Copy the expression for crontab or GitHub Actions.
Questions
What are the five fields?
Minute, hour, day of month, month and day of week, in that order. An asterisk means every value, and a slash sets a step, so */5 in the minute field means every five minutes.
How do day of month and day of week interact?
They are combined with OR when both are restricted, which surprises people. 0 0 13 * 5 runs on the 13th and on every Friday, not only on Friday the 13th.
Which time zone do the run times use?
Yours, so you can read them easily. Most servers run cron in UTC, so check what your host uses before relying on the hour.
Is 0 the same as 7 for Sunday?
Yes, both mean Sunday. Most implementations accept either.