What do the five cron fields mean?
In order they are minute (0–59), hour (0–23), day of month (1–31), month (1–12), and day of week (0–7, where 0 and 7 both mean Sunday). A value in each field constrains when the job runs.
Cron Expression Explainer
Translate a cron schedule into plain English.
Five fields: minute · hour · day-of-month · month · day-of-week
Enter a standard five-field cron expression above (minute, hour, day-of-month, month, day-of-week) to see a plain-English description of when it runs. Cron syntax is terse and easy to misread, so this is a quick sanity check before you ship a schedule.
The explainer supports the common syntax: `*`, specific values, ranges (`1-5`), lists (`1,15`), and steps (`*/5`). It describes the schedule rather than computing exact next-run times, and everything runs in your browser.
Frequently asked questions
What does */5 mean in cron?
A step value. In the minute field, */5 means “every 5 minutes” (0, 5, 10, …). More generally, */n in a field means every n units within that field’s range.