Cron explainer
Paste a cron expression and get a human-readable description plus next 5 run times
Cron Explainer
Explain cron expressions in plain English and preview next runs
0
minute
9
hour
*
day
*
month
1-5
dow
Runs at minute 0, at 9:00 on Monday through Friday
TL;DR
What is Cron explainer?
A cron explainer translates a cron expression into plain English and shows the next scheduled run times. Cron expressions are compact but non-obvious: "0 9 * * 1-5" is not immediately readable as "every weekday at 9:00 AM". The explainer makes it easy to verify that an expression matches the intended schedule.
Common use cases
- ‣Schedule review: confirm that a cron expression in a deployment config or CI pipeline fires at the intended time
- ‣Debugging: explain a cron from a colleague's code or a third-party service without memorizing the field order
- ‣Documentation: generate a human-readable schedule description to include in comments or runbook entries
Frequently asked questions
What is the field order in a cron expression?
Standard Unix cron uses five fields: minute (0-59), hour (0-23), day of month (1-31), month (1-12), day of week (0-7, where both 0 and 7 are Sunday). Some systems add a sixth field for seconds at the beginning.
What does */ mean in a cron expression?
*/n means "every n units". */15 in the minute field means every 15 minutes (at :00, :15, :30, :45). */2 in the hour field means every 2 hours. The * means "all values" and the /n specifies the step.