/tools/cron-expression-generator

Cron Expression Generator

Explain Unix five-field schedules and enumerate their next runs in an IANA timezone, including daylight-saving transitions.

cron://local

1. Expression

Generate, edit and calculate

Press Enter or Ctrl/Command + Enter to calculate.

2. Meaning

Human-readable schedule

Calculate to explain the expression.

3. Occurrences

Next runs

The next 10 runs appear here.

Ready. Schedule calculation runs in a cancellable local worker.

/syntax

Unix five-field cron reference

FieldAllowed rangeExamples
Minute0–590, */15
Hour0–239-17
Day of month1–311,15
Month1–12 or namesjan-mar
Day of week0–7 or namesmon-fri; 0 and 7 are Sunday

Lists, ranges and steps are supported, as are @yearly, @monthly, @weekly, @daily and @hourly.

/dialect

Deliberately Unix, not Quartz or EventBridge

This route accepts five fields and Vixie cron day semantics. It rejects a seconds field, Quartz ?, L, W and #, and AWS/EventBridge expressions with an explicit dialect error.

/dst

Timezone-aware enumeration

The worker enumerates UTC minutes and tests their local calendar representation. A nonexistent spring-forward time is skipped; a repeated fall-back wall time appears twice because it maps to two real instants. Calculation stops after five years and reports if the requested occurrences were not found.

/faq

Cron questions

What if both day fields are restricted?

Vixie OR semantics apply. A run occurs when either day-of-month or day-of-week matches, provided the time and month fields also match.

Does this install or run a cron job?

No. It only parses and previews a schedule locally; it never changes a server or sends the expression elsewhere.