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Cron Expression Parser

Turn a cron expression into plain English.

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Cron expression parser

Explain cron schedules in plain English

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How to use the cron expression parser

Three steps, all in your browser.

  1. 1

    Enter an expression

    Type or paste a cron expression, such as 0 9 * * 1-5.

  2. 2

    Read the result

    Matches, differences or the explanation update as you type.

  3. 3

    Copy the result

    Copy the output in one click. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.

Cron Expression Parser: what to know

The cron expression parser explains a cron schedule in plain English, using the open-source cRonstrue library (0 9 * * 1-5 becomes 'At 09:00, Monday through Friday'), breaks it down field by field and lists the next times it will run, in your local time or UTC. It's a quick check before you put a schedule into a crontab, a Kubernetes CronJob, a GitHub Actions workflow or a cloud scheduler.

A standard cron expression has five fields: minute (0-59), hour (0-23), day of month (1-31), month (1-12 or JAN-DEC) and day of week (0-7 or SUN-SAT, where both 0 and 7 mean Sunday). * means every value, a comma lists values (1,15), a dash gives a range (1-5) and a slash gives a step (*/15 means every 15). Some schedulers add a seconds field at the start or a year at the end, and Quartz supports special characters such as L (last) and # (nth weekday).

Two classic gotchas: when both day of month and day of week are restricted, standard cron runs the job when either matches, not both; and cron runs in the server's time zone (often UTC), so 0 9 * * * may not be 9 AM where you are. Daylight saving changes can also skip or repeat jobs scheduled in the small hours.

Popular uses

  • Checking a crontab line before deploying it
  • Reading schedules in Kubernetes CronJobs and CI workflows
  • Documenting scheduled jobs in plain language
  • Learning cron syntax

Tips for the best result

  • Check the time zone your scheduler uses: GitHub Actions and most cloud schedulers default to UTC.
  • Avoid scheduling at 2-3 AM local time if daylight saving applies.
  • See the cron examples reference page for 30 common schedules.

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