Cron expression generator

How it works

1. Describe the schedule: “every 15 minutes”, “at 5pm on weekdays”, “on the 1st at midnight”.
2. Or pick one of the common shapes from the list.
3. Check the next five runs. That is the real test of whether it says what you meant.
4. 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.

Is anything sent to a server?

No. It runs in your browser, so what you paste stays on your computer.