Build cron expressions visually with this free cron expression generator. Select minute, hour, day, month, and weekday from dropdown menus, see the next 5 scheduled run times, and use common presets -- all processed locally in your browser.
A cron expression is a string of five fields separated by spaces that defines a schedule for automated tasks. The fields represent minute (0-59), hour (0-23), day of month (1-31), month (1-12), and day of week (0-6, where 0 is Sunday). An asterisk (*) means "every value" for that field. Cron expressions are used in Unix/Linux cron jobs, CI/CD pipelines, cloud schedulers, and many other automation systems.
Read each field left to right: minute 0, hour 9, any day of month, any month, weekdays 1 through 5 (Monday to Friday). So "0 9 * * 1-5" means "at 9:00 AM every weekday." Special characters include: * (every), / (step, e.g., */5 means every 5), - (range), and , (list). This cron expression generator builds the expression for you so you do not need to memorize the syntax.
Standard Unix cron uses 5 fields (minute, hour, day, month, weekday). Some systems add a sixth field at the beginning for seconds (0-59). Cloud platforms like AWS CloudWatch and some Java schedulers (Quartz) use 6-field expressions. This generator builds standard 5-field cron expressions, which are the most widely supported format across crontab, GitHub Actions, Kubernetes CronJobs, and similar tools.
Yes. The 5-field cron expressions generated by this tool work directly with GitHub Actions (schedule trigger), Kubernetes CronJobs, AWS EventBridge, Google Cloud Scheduler, standard Linux crontab, and most other automation platforms. Simply copy the generated expression and paste it into your configuration. The "next 5 run times" display helps you verify the schedule is correct before deploying.