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Cron expression explainer

Turn a cron expression into plain English and see the next five times it runs in your time zone.

Five fields: minute, hour, day of month, month, day of week.

Stays on your device

Everything runs in your browser. Nothing you type is sent to Sellstamp or anyone else.

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How to use it

  1. Type or paste a five-field cron expression.
  2. Read the description.
  3. Check the next run times.

Nothing you paste leaves this page

The conversion runs in this browser tab. Nothing is sent to Sellstamp or anyone else, which matters for configuration files, customer exports and tokens.

Standard five-field cron

Minute, hour, day of month, month and day of week, with *, lists, ranges, steps and month or day names. The description comes from the cRonstrue library (MIT). The next runs are computed here, in your browser’s time zone; your server may use another, often UTC.

When both day of month and day of week are set, cron runs on a day that matches either, which surprises people; the next-run list shows the real effect.

Questions

What does */15 mean?

Every 15 units: in the minute field, at 0, 15, 30 and 45 past the hour.

Why does my job run on more days than expected?

With both day of month and day of week set, cron runs when either matches.

Which time zone is used?

The next runs are shown in your browser’s time zone. Check the time zone your server runs cron in.

Does it support seconds or years?

No. This is standard five-field cron; Quartz-style six- and seven-field expressions differ.