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Cron Parser

Decode cron expressions to a human description, the next 5 runs, and a per-field breakdown.

Presets

Description

every 5 minutes, of every hour

*/5 * * * *

Fields

Minute0, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55
Hourevery
Day of monthevery
Monthevery
Day of weekevery

Next 5 runs

  • 15/5/2026, 7:05:00 PM
  • 25/5/2026, 7:10:00 PM
  • 35/5/2026, 7:15:00 PM
  • 45/5/2026, 7:20:00 PM
  • 55/5/2026, 7:25:00 PM

Inputs stay on this device. Every developer tool on TaskKit runs entirely in your browser. Tokens, payloads, and pasted text are not transmitted to TaskKit servers or third parties.

What this tool does

Decodes a cron expression into plain English, lists the next 5 occurrences, and breaks down each field (minute, hour, day-of-month, month, day-of-week) so you can verify your schedule before deploying it. Supports steps (*/15), ranges (1-5), lists (1,15,30), names (MON, JAN), and the common aliases (@hourly, @daily, @weekly, @monthly, @yearly).

When you'd use it

  • Confirming that "every Tuesday at 3 AM" is actually 0 3 * * 2 and not 0 3 * * TUE (it's both).
  • Seeing when the next run will fire after a deploy.
  • Sanity-checking a schedule pulled from a Kubernetes CronJob manifest.
  • Translating between AWS EventBridge syntax and standard cron mentally.

How it works

The parser handles standard 5-field cron — minute, hour, day-of-month, month, day-of-week — plus the named aliases. It does not handle the 6-field Quartz dialect (which adds a seconds field) or the 7-field AWS form (which adds a year field), because those are different specs.

Next-run computation walks forward minute by minute, checking each field. That's slow in the worst case (a schedule that fires once a year takes ~525,600 iterations) but never noticeable for human-scale viewing.

Notes

Day-of-month and day-of-week are OR'd, not AND'd. 0 0 1 * MON doesn't mean "the first of the month if it's a Monday" — it means "the first of the month, or any Monday." This is the historical Vixie cron behavior and trips up almost everyone.

Sunday is 0 or 7? Both. Most cron implementations accept either. SUN is also fine.

Is @reboot supported? No — that's a system-cron-only directive without a wall-clock meaning, and we can't preview it.

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