Cron to English Converter – Free, Online, Private
Explain a five-field cron expression in English, with the minute, hour, day, month and weekday called out in 24-hour time.
How to convert Cron to English
- Paste a cron expression. The sample is every 15 minutes.
- Read the sentence. Names of months and weekdays are expanded.
- Use the cron builder on Utilo if you would rather click the fields than edit the text.
Five fields
The expression is minute, hour, day of month, month, day of week. */15 * * * * means every 15 minutes, all hours, all days. 0 9 * * 1-5 means 09:00 on Monday through Friday. The description uses 24-hour time so 9 and 21 cannot be confused, and it is verbose: ranges and steps are spelled out rather than left as tokens. The parser rejects a field it cannot read instead of guessing. A trailing comment after the expression should be deleted; this page wants the expression only. Seconds, the optional leading sixth field used by some Quartz and Spring schedules, are not part of classic cron and will not parse here. Drop the seconds field or use the cron parser tool, which documents the dialect it accepts.
Names and steps
Month names such as JAN and weekday names such as MON are accepted. Steps such as 0-30/5 are described as a range with a stride. A list such as 1,15 is described as those exact values. The day-of-month and day-of-week interaction is the sharp edge of cron: when both are restricted, many implementations run the job when either matches. The sentence describes the fields; it does not re-simulate a particular daemon's OR versus AND rule. Check the daemon if both fields are something other than *. Time zones are not in the expression. 0 9 * * * is 09:00 in whatever zone the scheduler uses, which is often UTC on a server and local time on a laptop.
Worked example
*/15 * * * * reads as every 15 minutes. 30 4 1 * * is 04:30 on the first of every month. 0 0 * * 0 is midnight on Sunday in the dialects that number Sunday as 0. If the sentence surprises you, the field that is wrong is usually the one you counted from the left incorrectly: the first star is the minute, not the hour. The cron builder on this site shows the next run times, which is the check to use after the sentence looks right. This page only explains the text.
Why it stays local
A crontab can name internal hosts in a neighboring column. You do not need to paste that column here, and the expression itself is not uploaded. The description is produced with cronstrue in the page. For a single instant rather than a schedule, use the Unix timestamp pages.
Frequently asked questions
What does */15 * * * * mean?
Every 15 minutes. The sample is that expression.
Are seconds supported?
No. Use five fields: minute, hour, day of month, month, day of week.
Which day is 0?
In the common cron numbering, 0 and 7 are Sunday. The sentence uses the weekday name.
Is the expression uploaded?
No. The description is built in the browser.