Cron Expression Generator & Converter
A cron expression describes a recurring schedule using five fields — minute, hour, day of month, month, day of week — e.g. `30 14 * * *` means "at 14:30 every day". Cron drives scheduled jobs in Linux, CI/CD pipelines, cloud schedulers and data pipelines.
This converter takes a concrete date-time and renders the cron expression that matches it, plus the next run time simulation, so you can verify a schedule produces the runs you expect before deploying it.
Cron Expression Generator & Converter Quick Reference
| Format | Pattern / Description | Example 1 | Example 2 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cron Expression | min hr dom mon dow | 30 22 13 8 4 | 0 8 1 1 4 |
| Cron Next Run (Sim) | Next Hour | 2026-08-13 15:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 01:00:00 UTC |
* Examples are rendered in UTC for the fixed sample instants above.
When to Use Cron Expression Generator &
Scheduled jobs & CI/CD
Translate "daily at 2:30 AM UTC" into a correct cron string for GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or a cron daemon without re-reading the syntax reference.
Data pipeline scheduling
Airflow, Dagster and cloud schedulers accept cron expressions. Generate and verify schedules for hourly/daily/weekly batch jobs.
Verifying next run times
Given an existing cron expression, compute the next run times to confirm it fires when expected — especially across DST and month boundaries.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a cron expression?
Five whitespace-separated fields: minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week. `30 14 * * *` = 14:30 daily. Special names like `@daily` are aliases for common schedules.
What is the difference between * and ? in cron?
In classic cron, `*` means "any value" and is used in all five fields. The `?` wildcard comes from Quartz-style crons, where it means "no specific value" and is used when day-of-month and day-of-week are both specified.
What timezone does cron use?
Classic cron uses the server's local timezone; cloud schedulers (Cloud Scheduler, EventBridge) let you set a timezone. UTC is recommended for consistency.
How do I schedule every 30 minutes?
Use `*/30 * * * *` (every 30th minute of every hour) or `0,30 * * * *`. For seconds-level schedules you need 6-field cron (Quartz/cronie extensions).
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