How do I read a cron expression in plain English?

Paste or type your cron expression (e.g. 0 9 * * 1-5) in the field above. The parser instantly translates it to a human-readable summary (e.g. "At 09:00, Monday through Friday") and explains what each of the five fields controls.

What is the format of a cron expression and what do the fields mean?

A standard 5-field cron expression is: minute (0–59) | hour (0–23) | day of month (1–31) | month (1–12) | day of week (0–7, where 0 and 7 are Sunday). Special characters include * (any), , (list), - (range), / (step), and ? (unspecified).

How do I write a cron job that runs every weekday at 9:00 AM?

Use the expression: 0 9 * * 1-5. This means: minute 0, hour 9, any day of month, any month, Monday through Friday (1–5). Paste it into the parser above to confirm the translation matches your intent before deploying.

Does the cron parser support non-standard extensions like seconds or @reboot?

The parser handles the standard 5-field POSIX cron format as used by system cron, GitHub Actions, and most job schedulers. Extensions like a 6th seconds field (used by Spring and some Linux schedulers) or @reboot/@daily shortcuts are recognised and explained where detected.

Is the cron parser free?

Yes — free, no account, runs entirely in your browser.

cron

Cron Parser

Explain cron expressions in plain English. See what each field means and get a human-readable summary.

Your files are processed locally and never uploaded to our servers.

Cron expression

minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week

Runs at 09:00, on Mon to Fri

Field	Value	Meaning
Minute	0	:00
Hour	9	09:xx
Day (month)	*	Every day
Month	*	Every month
Day (week)	1-5	Mon to Fri

How it works

1
Type or paste input
Paste your value into the input field. No file needed — works directly in your browser.
2
Get instant results
The result appears in real time as you type. No server, no upload.
3
Copy the output
Click the copy button to copy the result to your clipboard instantly.

Frequently Asked Questions

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