In short: A cron expression is five fields — minute, hour, day of month, month and day of week — that define a repeating schedule; a parser explains it in plain English and lists the next run times.
About Cron Expression Parser
Cron is the scheduler behind Linux crontab, Kubernetes CronJobs, GitHub Actions schedule triggers and most hosting platforms. Its five fields — minute, hour, day of month, month and day of week — are compact but easy to misread: is 0 9 * * 1 Monday or Sunday? Does */10 in the hour field mean every ten hours, or ten past?
This parser explains the expression in plain English, breaks down each field, and calculates the next ten times it will fire, in your time zone or in UTC. It supports lists (1,15), ranges (9-17), steps (*/5, 10-50/10), month and weekday names (JAN, MON) and shortcuts like @daily and @hourly, and it follows the standard rule that when both day-of-month and day-of-week are restricted, a day matching either one runs.
How to use Cron Expression Parser
- Type or paste a five-field cron expression, or tap one of the examples.
- Read the plain-English description and the per-field table.
- Choose Local or UTC to match the server that will run the job — many CI services run cron in UTC.
- Check the list of upcoming runs to confirm the schedule does what you expect.
Examples
*/15 9-17 * * 1-5 runs at :00, :15, :30 and :45 past each hour from 09:00 to 17:45, Monday to Friday.
0 9 1-7 * 1 does not mean “the first Monday of the month”. Because both day fields are set, it runs on days 1–7 of every month and on every Monday.
Frequently asked questions
Does this support seconds or years?
No. It follows the standard five-field Unix format. Quartz and some Java schedulers add a seconds field at the start and a year field at the end; remove them before pasting.
Is Sunday 0 or 7?
Both. Standard cron accepts 0 and 7 for Sunday, and this parser does too.
Why is my GitHub Actions schedule running at the wrong hour?
GitHub Actions evaluates cron in UTC. Switch the time zone selector to UTC to see the exact run times.
What does @reboot do?
It runs once when the cron daemon starts. It has no future run times, so this tool explains it but cannot list them.
Updated November 2026 · Free, no signup · How we build and test tools