All tools
Free tool
Cron Expression Builder
Build, validate, and understand cron schedules. See plain English explanations and preview when your jobs will run.
Loading tool…
What is a cron expression?
A cron expression is a string of five fields that represents a schedule for running automated tasks. Used in CI/CD pipelines, cloud schedulers, and automation tools.
The five fields
- •Minute (0-59): When during the hour
- •Hour (0-23): When during the day (24-hour format)
- •Day of month (1-31): Which day of the month
- •Month (1-12): Which month
- •Day of week (0-6): Which day (0 = Sunday)
Common use cases
- •Scheduling database backups
- •Running nightly build pipelines
- •Sending periodic reports
- •Cleaning up temporary files
Where cron is used
- •GitHub Actions: Schedule workflows
- •AWS EventBridge: Schedule Lambda functions
- •Kubernetes CronJobs: Run containerized tasks
- •Vercel Cron: Trigger serverless functions
Building developer onboarding?
Skene generates onboarding checklists from your codebase.