Paste the expression into a browser-based cron parser and it translates the five fields into plain English, like "0 3 * * 1" meaning 3:00 AM every Monday, along with the next run times. It is the fastest way to check a schedule before it fires at the wrong hour, and it runs entirely in your browser.
Free cron expression parser. Paste a cron schedule to get a plain-English explanation and the next upcoming run times, all computed in your browser.
Open Cron Expression Parser → Free toolFree visual cron builder. Pick minute, hour, day, month and weekday from dropdowns to generate a valid crontab expression with a live plain-English preview.
Open Cron Builder →A standard cron expression has five fields: minute, hour, day of month, month, and day of week. An asterisk means every value, slashes give steps so */15 in the minute field means every 15 minutes, and commas and dashes give lists and ranges. The notation is compact but easy to misread, which is why translating it to plain English plus a list of upcoming run times catches mistakes before they ship.
Two things bite people repeatedly. First, in classic cron, if both the day-of-month and day-of-week fields are restricted, the job runs when either one matches, not both. Second, cron runs in the timezone of the machine or scheduler, so a job written for 3 AM local time fires at a different wall-clock hour on a UTC server. A parser that shows concrete next-run timestamps makes both problems visible.
In order: minute (0-59), hour (0-23), day of month (1-31), month (1-12), and day of week (0-6, Sunday is 0).
A step value: every 5 units of that field. In the minute field it means every 5 minutes.
The timezone of the system or scheduler running it, which is often UTC on servers. Always check before assuming local time.