Cron Expression Generator

Build and understand cron expressions with a visual editor — instantly

* * * * *
Runs every minute
Minute
0–59
Hour
0–23
Day
1–31
Month
1–12
Weekday
0–6 (Sun=0)
Common Schedules
Parse a Cron Expression
How to Use the Cron Generator
1
Edit the minute, hour, day, month, and weekday fields to build your schedule
2
The cron expression and human-readable description update instantly
3
Click any preset to load common schedules instantly
4
Paste an existing cron expression to parse and understand it
About Cron Expressions

Cron is a time-based job scheduler in Unix-like systems. Cron expressions define when scheduled tasks (cron jobs) should run. The standard format has 5 fields: minute (0–59), hour (0–23), day of month (1–31), month (1–12), and day of week (0–6, Sunday=0).

Special characters: * means "every", / means "every N" (e.g. */5 = every 5 minutes), - means a range (e.g. 9-17 = 9 to 17), , means a list (e.g. 1,3,5 = Monday, Wednesday, Friday). Cron jobs are widely used for backups, reports, cleanups, and scheduled API calls.

Frequently Asked Questions
*/5 * * * * means "every 5 minutes". The */ syntax means "every N units". So */5 in the minute field runs at minutes 0, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, and 55 of every hour.
Use 1-5 in the weekday field. For example, 0 9 * * 1-5 runs at 9:00 AM Monday through Friday. Day 1 = Monday, 2 = Tuesday, ..., 5 = Friday, 6 = Saturday, 0 = Sunday.
In Hostinger hPanel, go to Advanced → Cron Jobs. Enter the cron expression and the command to run (e.g. php /home/user/public_html/script.php). Use this generator to create the expression, then paste it in Hostinger.
Cron is the background service (daemon) that runs scheduled tasks. Crontab (cron table) is the file where cron jobs are stored. You edit the crontab using the crontab -e command or through a hosting panel's cron job interface.