Cron Expression Explainer
Cron strings are powerful but hard to read at a glance. Paste any 5-field or 6-field expression here and get a plain-English explanation of what it does, a field-by-field breakdown, and the next five times the schedule will actually run.
Format: minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week | seconds can also come first (Quartz style).
Plain English
Field breakdown
| Field | Expression | Meaning |
|---|
Next 5 run times
How to use
- Paste your cron expression into the box above (5 fields, or 6 fields starting with seconds).
- Click Explain.
- Read the plain-English summary, the per-field breakdown, and the next five times the schedule will run.
Tips
- Note whether your system expects 5 fields or 6; an extra seconds field shifts everything.
- Day-of-month and day-of-week together usually mean 'either matches' in standard cron - check the breakdown.
- Always confirm with the next run times before saving a schedule that touches production data.
- Server time zone decides when it fires; a 9 AM job in UTC is not 9 AM locally.