Cron expression generator
A schedule in words, an expression out.
Examples temporarily replace the input and settings. You can restore your previous work.
0 characters
Output
Paste or type above to see the result here.
Your files stay on your device
This tool runs entirely in your browser. What you paste is processed on your device and is never sent to a server, so it is safe to use with tokens, keys and unpublished text.
Example
Example: the jobs of a small web server, from plain English to five fields
A small shop’s server needs a nightly backup, a morning report, payroll exports and a stock check during office hours. Each schedule is typed in words. The next runs below are counted from Friday, October 30, 2026 at noon; the page counts from the moment you build, in your device’s time zone.
- “between 9am and 5pm” is when the runs stop, so the hours are 9-16 and the last stock check of the day is at 4:45 PM. Type “from 9 to 17” if you want 5:00, 5:15 … as well.
- Weekdays are written 1-5 and Sunday 0, which every implementation accepts.
- What one line cannot hold is refused with the reason, not guessed: the last day of the month, every 90 minutes, two times at different minutes.
| Typed | Expression | First runs |
|---|---|---|
| every weekday at 9:30 | 30 9 * * 1-5 | Mon Nov 2 09:30, Tue Nov 3 09:30 |
| at 2:30am every day | 30 2 * * * | Sat Oct 31 02:30, Sun Nov 1 02:30 |
| on the 1st and 15th at 6pm | 0 18 1,15 * * | Sun Nov 1 18:00, Sun Nov 15 18:00 |
| every 15 minutes between 9am and 5pm on weekdays | */15 9-16 * * 1-5 | Fri Oct 30 12:15, 12:30, 12:45 |
| every sunday at 3am | 0 3 * * 0 | Sun Nov 1 03:00, Sun Nov 8 03:00 |
| on the last day of the month at 11pm | refused | run on the 28th–31st and check the date in the command |
| every 90 minutes | refused, two lines offered | 0 */3 * * * and 30 1-23/3 * * * |
| at 8:15 and 17:45 on weekdays | refused, one line per time | 15 8 * * 1-5 and 45 17 * * 1-5 |
Five lines ready to paste into the crontab, each checked by its next runs, and three schedules that need two lines or a date check in the script. A schedule that can only be written wrongly gets no expression.
How it works
- Describe the schedule: “every 15 minutes”, “at 5pm on weekdays”, “on the 1st at midnight”.
- Or pick one of the common shapes from the list.
- Check the next five runs. That is the real test of whether it says what you meant.
- Copy the expression into your crontab.
Frequently asked questions
- Is Sunday 0 or 7?
- Both, on most implementations — 0 and 7 are each accepted. This writes 0, because every implementation understands that one. It is exactly the kind of detail that sends people looking for a page like this.
- What happens if it cannot read my description?
- It says so and shows what it does understand, rather than returning something plausible. A cron line that runs at the wrong time runs quietly at the wrong time, possibly for months, and a confident guess here is worse than no answer.
- Why show the next five runs?
- Because reading an expression back is not the same as checking it. The runs are worked out by the same parser the explaining page uses, so what you see is what a machine would do with it — not what this page believes it wrote.
- Does it do the extended syntax?
- Not the Quartz seconds field or the @yearly-style shorthands. Those vary between implementations, and the five-field form is what crontab, Kubernetes and most schedulers actually read.
- How do I run a cron job on the last day of the month?
- Plain cron has no field for it, and the L some schedulers accept is refused by standard crontab, so the page says so instead of writing it. The usual way round: run on the 28th to the 31st (0 23 28-31 * *) and have the command check that tomorrow is the 1st before it does anything.
- Why can’t it write every 90 minutes?
- A step in the minute field starts again every hour, so */90 would run once an hour, at minute 0. Two lines together run every 90 minutes: 0 */3 * * * (0:00, 3:00, 6:00 …) and 30 1-23/3 * * * (1:30, 4:30, 7:30 …). The page offers both.
- Is anything sent to a server?
- No. It runs in your browser, so what you paste stays on your computer.
Made for a specific use
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