Cron Expression Explainer

Choose the scheduler dialect first. See what the expression means, convert formats, and preview upcoming runs in its time zone.

Expression format

IANA time zone

Cron expression

Convert to

In plain English

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Field	Value	Meaning

Next 5 runs Times shown in the selected IANA zone

DST can skip a local time in spring or repeat it in autumn. GitHub Actions schedules always use UTC; workflow starts may be delayed by up to 15 minutes.

Cron syntax

Linux, Kubernetes and GitHub Actions use five fields: minute, hour, day of month, month and day of week. EventBridge uses six: minute, hour, day of month, month, day of week and year; its day-of-month or day-of-week field must use ? when the other is specified. EventBridge numbers weekdays 1–7 (Sunday–Saturday), unlike POSIX 0–6 (Sunday–Saturday). Operators supported here: *, ,, - and /; month and weekday names are also accepted.

Day-of-month and day-of-week

When both fields are restricted (neither starts with *), standard cron runs the job when either matches. If one is *, only the other restricts the schedule.

Scope

This tool does not support Quartz seconds or special day operators such as L, W and #. Linux macros such as @monthly are not portable to Kubernetes, GitHub Actions or EventBridge; convert a regular expression instead. Kubernetes time zones are configured on the CronJob, Linux uses the daemon's zone, and EventBridge schedules use UTC unless a different schedule time zone is configured. Verify the scheduler's own DST behavior before relying on repeated or skipped local times.