🔍 Cron Reading & Translation Tutorial

How to Read a Cron Expression

Master the five-step mental model for translating any cryptic Cron schedule into clear, unambiguous plain English.

Dialect:

5 fields

Cron Expression (Standard UNIX / Linux Cron)

Plain EnglishWeekly

“Every Monday at 2:30 PM”

Runs every monday at 2:30 pm. Evaluated according to STANDARD cron specifications.

Evaluation Timezone

Popular Presets:

The 5-Field Position Rule

Whenever you see a five-field Cron expression (such as 30 14 * * 1), map each space-separated position to its respective time unit from left to right:

Position 130MinuteAt minute 30 (:30)

Position 214HourAt 14:00 (2:00 PM)

Position 3*Day of MonthEvery day

Position 4*MonthEvery month

Position 51Day of WeekOnly Monday

Plain English Result:

“At 2:30 PM, only on Monday.”

Decoding Common Cron Operators

*/5 in field 1 (Minute)Step Increment

Read as: "Every 5 minutes" (:00, :05, :10, :15, :20, :25, :30, :35, :40, :45, :50, :55).

9-17 in field 2 (Hour)Range Operator

Read as: "Every hour from 9:00 AM through 5:00 PM inclusive".

1,15 in field 3 (Day of Month)List Operator

Read as: "On the 1st and 15th day of the month".

1-5 in field 5 (Day of Week)Weekday Range

Read as: "Monday through Friday (weekdays)".

How to Read 6-Field Spring & Quartz Cron

When reading Spring Boot or Quartz schedules, notice that the expression begins with Seconds:

# ┌────────────── Second (0 - 59)
# │ ┌────────────── Minute (0 - 59)
# │ │ ┌────────────── Hour (0 - 23)
# │ │ │ ┌────────────── Day of Month (1 - 31 or ?)
# │ │ │ │ ┌────────────── Month (1 - 12)
# │ │ │ │ │ ┌────────────── Day of Week (0 - 7 or ?)
# │ │ │ │ │ │
0 0 9 * * MON-FRI

The example above translates to: "At 09:00:00 AM (second 0, minute 0, hour 9) on every weekday from Monday through Friday".

Frequently Asked Questions

Everything you need to know about Cron expressions, syntax rules, and platform nuances.

How do you read a Cron expression from left to right?

In standard 5-field Unix Cron, read from left to right: 1st is Minute (0-59), 2nd is Hour (0-23), 3rd is Day of Month (1-31), 4th is Month (1-12), and 5th is Day of Week (0-7). In 6-field Spring or Quartz Cron, the 1st field is Second (0-59).

What does "0 9 * * 1-5" mean?

"0 9 * * 1-5" means "Every weekday (Monday through Friday) at 9:00 AM". Field 1 (0) = minute 0, Field 2 (9) = hour 9 (09:00 AM), Field 3 (*) = every day of month, Field 4 (*) = every month, Field 5 (1-5) = Monday through Friday.

How do I know if a Cron expression has 5 or 6 fields?

Count the space-separated tokens. If there are 5 tokens, it is standard Unix/Linux/Kubernetes Cron starting with minutes. If there are 6 tokens, check if the first token is seconds (Spring/Quartz) or if the last token is year (AWS/Quartz).

What does "0 0 1 1 *" mean?

"0 0 1 1 *" means "Every year on January 1st at midnight (12:00 AM / 00:00)". Field 1 is minute 0, Field 2 is hour 0, Field 3 is day 1, Field 4 is month 1 (January), and Field 5 is any day of the week.

How do I automatically translate a Cron expression into English?

You can paste any Cron string into our Cron Explainer tool or the interactive workspace above to receive an instant, accurate plain-English translation with complete field-by-field breakdowns.