Cron expression reader
Read a cron line in plain words before it runs.
Five fields decide when something runs, and reading them wrong is easy. The failure is worse than a syntax error, because a cron line with an hour of 25 does not complain: the job simply never fires, and nobody notices until something is missing. This says what the line means in a sentence, and refuses a field outside its real range.
How to use it
- Paste the cron expression.
- Read the sentence.
- Check each field below it.
Why use this tool
Completely private
Everything runs inside your browser. Your files and text are never sent to a server.
Free, with no limits
No sign-up, no watermarks and no cap on how many times you can use it.
Instant results
There is no upload or queue to wait for, so results appear as fast as your device can work.
Works on any device
Runs in any modern browser on phone, tablet or desktop. Nothing to install.
Frequently asked questions
- What are the five fields?
- Minute, hour, day of the month, month and day of the week, in that order. A star means every value; */15 means every fifteenth; 1-5 is a range and 1,3,5 is a list.
- Why does it reject some expressions?
- Because a value falls outside what the field allows, such as an hour above 23 or a month above 12. Some systems accept these and then never run the job, which is much harder to notice than an error.
- Does it handle special strings like @daily?
- Not yet. Write @daily as 0 0 * * * and @hourly as 0 * * * *, which is what they expand to anyway.