Translate cron expressions into plain English and preview the next five run times. Presets for common schedules. Free, runs in your browser.
First time here? Type a cron expression, or pick a preset Your input is processed locally and disappears when you close the tab.
Nobody remembers cron syntax. Five space-separated fields with different ranges, two of which overlap in confusing ways, is not something anyone retains between uses. This free cron expression generator translates any expression into plain English and shows exactly when it will run.\n\nThe run-time preview is the part that actually prevents mistakes. A description can be misread; five concrete dates cannot. It catches the classic errors instantly — a schedule you believed was weekly firing every single day, or a day-of-month and day-of-week combination that behaves quite differently from how it reads.\n\nPresets cover the schedules people actually want: every five minutes, hourly, daily at midnight, weekdays at nine, the first of the month. Each field is broken out as you type with its valid range, and a reference table sits below for the syntax you have forgotten.\n\nOne caveat worth taking seriously: times are shown in your browser's zone, because that is all a browser can know. Your server almost certainly runs in UTC, and that mismatch is the most common reason a cron job fires at an unexpected hour. Check the server's zone before you trust the schedule. Pair this with the Unix Timestamp Converter for debugging times in logs, or the Time Zone Converter to work out the offset.
Type a cron expression, or pick a preset
Read the plain-English description
Check the next five run times
Copy the expression into your crontab
Run times are shown in your browser's time zone. Your server almost certainly runs in UTC, so a job scheduled for 9am local may not fire when you expect — check the server's zone before relying on the times above.