Because that is every minute, sixty times an hour. The hour field being * is what makes it "every hour"; the minute field being 0 is what stops it being every minute of every hour. It is the commonest cron mistake there is.

Does it work in GitHub Actions, Kubernetes and the cloud schedulers?

The five fields do. What differs is everything around them: some accept names like @daily, Kubernetes CronJobs take the same five, and GitHub Actions runs scheduled workflows late under load. Paste the expression, but do not assume the promptness.

Can I read an expression I already have?

Yes — the cron parser page does that. Paste an expression and it says in words when it runs, which is the check worth doing before you trust one somebody else wrote.

Is anything sent anywhere?

No. The expression is built and read back in your browser, and nothing is uploaded. It is free, with no account.

Cron every hour

It is 0 * * * *, on the hour, not * * * * *.

Input0 characters

Or pick a common one

cron: 0 * * * *

Output

0 * * * *

  ┌───────── minute (0–59)
  │ ┌─────── hour (0–23)
  │ │ ┌───── day of month (1–31)
  │ │ │ ┌─── month (1–12)
  │ │ │ │ ┌─ day of week (0–6, Sunday is 0 — and 7 on most systems)
  0 * * * *

  It runs at:
    minute        0
    hour          every
    day of month  every
    month         every
    day of week   every

  Next five runs:
    2026-09-24 11:00
    2026-09-24 12:00
    2026-09-24 13:00
    2026-09-24 14:00
    2026-09-24 15:00

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 What you paste is processed on your device and is never sent to a server, so it is safe to use with tokens, keys and unpublished text.

How it works

The expression is already there: 0 * * * *. The five fields under it are minute, hour, day of month, month and day of week, in that order.
Copy it into your crontab, your CI schedule or your cloud scheduler. The same five fields mean the same thing in all of them.
To change it, set the menu back to none and describe the schedule in your own words — "every 2 hours", "at 5pm on weekdays" — and it is built and read back to you.
Check the reading, not the expression. What the page shows underneath comes from parsing what was built, so it is what a machine would do with it rather than what we meant.

Frequently asked questions

Why not * * * * *?: Because that is every minute, sixty times an hour. The hour field being * is what makes it "every hour"; the minute field being 0 is what stops it being every minute of every hour. It is the commonest cron mistake there is.
Does it work in GitHub Actions, Kubernetes and the cloud schedulers?: The five fields do. What differs is everything around them: some accept names like @daily, Kubernetes CronJobs take the same five, and GitHub Actions runs scheduled workflows late under load. Paste the expression, but do not assume the promptness.
Can I read an expression I already have?: Yes — the cron parser page does that. Paste an expression and it says in words when it runs, which is the check worth doing before you trust one somebody else wrote.
Is anything sent anywhere?: No. The expression is built and read back in your browser, and nothing is uploaded. It is free, with no account.

Cron every hour

Your files stay on your device

How it works

Frequently asked questions

Made for a specific use

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