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Cron Expression Explainer

Type a cron expression and read it back as a sentence, with the next several run times worked out so you can see whether it fires when you think it does. Handles ranges, steps, lists, and the day-of-month/day-of-week overlap that trips almost everyone. Build one from menus if you would rather not remember the field order.

minute hour day month weekday
In plain English

At 09:00 on weekdays.

Next 6 runsUTC · local
  1. 2026-08-31 09:00:00 UTCAug 31, 2026, 09:00:00 AM UTC· tomorrow
  2. 2026-09-01 09:00:00 UTCSep 01, 2026, 09:00:00 AM UTC· in 2 days
  3. 2026-09-02 09:00:00 UTCSep 02, 2026, 09:00:00 AM UTC· in 3 days
  4. 2026-09-03 09:00:00 UTCSep 03, 2026, 09:00:00 AM UTC· in 4 days
  5. 2026-09-04 09:00:00 UTCSep 04, 2026, 09:00:00 AM UTC· in 5 days
  6. 2026-09-07 09:00:00 UTCSep 07, 2026, 09:00:00 AM UTC· next week
Field reference
Minute
0–59
Hour
0–23
Day of month
1–31
Month
1–12JAN–DEC
Day of week
0–6SUN–SAT, 7 = Sun

Operators: * any, a-b range, a,b,c list, and a slash for steps — a wildcard or range followed by /n takes every nth value.

Method & assumptions
  • Standard 5-field cron: minute, hour, day-of-month, month, day-of-week. Seconds and the non-standard 6th field are not parsed.
  • When both day-of-month and day-of-week are restricted, the job fires when EITHER matches — the Vixie-cron rule, which surprises almost everyone.
  • Times are computed in UTC, because a cron line carries no zone of its own, then shown in UTC and your local time side by side.
  • Everything runs in your browser. The expression is never sent anywhere.

Software engineering

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Anyone writing a crontab or a scheduled job and wanting to be sure of the timing before it ships.

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