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What does this cron schedule mean?

Paste a crontab schedule to read it in plain English and see the next times it runs on a server in your time zone or in UTC.

//_01 Syntax

Five fields, read from left to right

01

Minute

0–59
02

Hour

0–23
03

Day of the month

1–31
04

Month

1–12 · JAN–DEC
05

Day of the week

0–6 · SUN–SAT · 7 = SUN

Character	Means	Example
*	Every value	* * * * *every minute
,	A list of values	0 8,12,18 * * *at 08:00, 12:00 and 18:00
-	A range	0 9 * * 1-5at 09:00, Monday through Friday
/	Every nth value	/15 * * *every 15 minutes
@	A shortcut	@daily@yearly, @monthly, @weekly, @daily, @hourly

Questions

What are the five fields of a cron expression?

Minute (0–59), hour (0–23), day of the month (1–31), month (1–12 or JAN–DEC) and day of the week (0–6 or SUN–SAT, where 0 and 7 are both Sunday). A * means every value, a-b a range, a,b a list and */n every nth value.

What happens when both day of the month and day of the week are set?

Standard cron runs the job when either one matches. 0 9 1 * MON runs at 09:00 on the 1st of every month and on every Monday, not only on Mondays that fall on the 1st.

Which time zone does cron use?

The time zone of the machine or service that runs it. Linux servers often run in UTC, GitHub Actions schedules always do, and Kubernetes CronJobs use the controller's zone unless spec.timeZone is set. This page shows the next runs in both your time zone and UTC.

How do I know if a cron job stopped running?

Cron says nothing when a job doesn't run or fails. Add a ping at the end of the job (curl to a heartbeat URL) and a cron job monitor alerts you when the ping is late. Uptimecheck reads the same schedule you paste here.

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