Cron Expression Editor
Write a cron expression and instantly see what it means in plain English, plus the next several times it will run. Perfect for scheduling jobs, backups, and automated scripts with confidence.
“At 09:00 AM, Monday through Friday”
Next 5 runs
- 1. Jun 16, 2026, 9:00:00 AM UTC
- 2. Jun 17, 2026, 9:00:00 AM UTC
- 3. Jun 18, 2026, 9:00:00 AM UTC
- 4. Jun 19, 2026, 9:00:00 AM UTC
- 5. Jun 22, 2026, 9:00:00 AM UTC
Common schedules
About the Cron Expression Editor
Cron is the time-based job scheduler on Unix-like systems. A cron expression packs a schedule into five fields — minute, hour, day-of-month, month, and day-of-week — so "0 9 * * 1-5" means 9:00 AM every weekday. The syntax is terse and easy to misread, which is how jobs end up running at the wrong time.
Translating an expression into a sentence and listing its next runs removes that ambiguity before you deploy it. Whether you are configuring a backup, a cleanup script, or a CI pipeline, seeing the schedule in plain language catches mistakes a glance at the raw asterisks would miss.
How to use it
- 1Type a cron expression such as "0 9 * * 1-5" in the input.
- 2Read the human-readable description to confirm it does what you expect.
- 3Check the upcoming run times, then copy the expression into your crontab.
Features
- Plain-English description of any cron expression
- Preview of the next 5 scheduled run times
- Quick presets for common schedules (hourly, daily, weekly)
- Validation that flags malformed expressions
Frequently asked questions
What are the five cron fields?
In order: minute (0-59), hour (0-23), day of month (1-31), month (1-12), and day of week (0-6, Sunday=0). An asterisk means "every".
What does "0 9 * * 1-5" mean?
It runs at 09:00 every day from Monday to Friday — a typical weekday-morning schedule.
Does this support special strings like @daily?
The editor focuses on standard 5-field expressions and shows their plain-English meaning and next run times. @daily is equivalent to "0 0 * * *".
Are the next run times calculated locally?
Yes. Parsing and run-time prediction happen in your browser; nothing is sent to a server.