Cron Generator
Build a cron expression from simple fields, or describe an existing one in plain English.
Build
Describe
Every minute, every hour, every day of the month, every month, every day of the week.
What is Cron Generator?
A cron expression is a five-field pattern (minute, hour, day-of-month, month, day-of-week) used by Unix/Linux schedulers — and by countless CI systems, cloud schedulers, and job queues that copy the same syntax — to describe when a recurring task should run. This tool works both directions: build an expression by filling in five simple fields (or picking a common preset like "hourly" or "daily at midnight"), and read an existing expression back as a plain-English sentence so you can double-check what a schedule you found in someone else's config actually does before you trust it.
How to Use Cron Generator
- In the Build section, click a preset for a common schedule, or type directly into the five fields (minute, hour, day-of-month, month, day-of-week).
- Leave a field as * to mean "every value" for that field.
- The resulting cron expression appears live in the Describe section.
- Read the plain-English description underneath to confirm the schedule means what you expect.
- You can also paste an existing cron expression directly into the Describe field to have it explained, independent of the Build section.
Examples
Every weekday at 9am
Input: 0 9 * * 1-5
Output: At minute 0, at hour 9, every day of the month, every month, Monday through Friday.
Every 15 minutes
Input: */15 * * * *
Output: Every 15 minutes, every hour, every day of the month, every month, every day of the week.
Common Mistakes
- Assuming cron uses 12-hour time — the hour field is always 0-23 (24-hour), not AM/PM.
- Forgetting that day-of-week 0 is Sunday, not Monday, in standard cron — off-by-one schedule bugs are common here.
- Leaving day-of-month and day-of-week both restricted, not realizing most cron implementations OR them together rather than AND them.
- Copying a 6-field expression (with a leading seconds field, used by some non-standard schedulers) into a tool or crontab that expects the standard 5-field format.
Why Use This Tool
- Two-way — build a schedule from simple fields, or decode one you found elsewhere.
- One-click presets for the schedules people write most often.
- Runs entirely client-side; nothing is sent to a server.
- Plain-English description makes it easy to sanity-check a schedule before deploying it.