Cron Expression Parser
Parse and explain any cron expression in plain English — see next scheduled run times and validate cron syntax.
About Cron Expression Parser
Cron expressions are compact but can be difficult to read without experience. This parser translates any cron expression into a plain English description and shows the next 10 scheduled run times, making it easy to verify that a cron schedule does what you intend before deploying it to production.
Debugging cron schedules is a common source of production incidents — a misplaced field or incorrect range can cause jobs to run far more or less frequently than intended. Always validate your cron expressions with a parser before using them in production crontabs, Kubernetes CronJobs, AWS EventBridge rules, or CI/CD pipelines.
FAQ
Why isn't my cron job running when expected?
Common issues: the server timezone differs from what you expect (use UTC explicitly), minute/hour fields are swapped (the order is: minute hour day month weekday), the cron daemon isn't running, environment variables differ from interactive shell, or the script path is incorrect in the crontab.
What is @reboot and @daily in cron?
Many cron implementations support shorthand strings: @reboot (run once at startup), @yearly/@annually (0 0 1 1 *), @monthly (0 0 1 * *), @weekly (0 0 * * 0), @daily/@midnight (0 0 * * *), @hourly (0 * * * *). These are not standard and may not work in all environments.