Technical and design
Cron Expression Explainer
Read a cron expression in plain English and Arabic, and see when it runs next.
Runs in your browser; nothing is uploaded. · Free, no account · 1 min
Five parts: minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week. Six or seven parts (with seconds and a year, as in Quartz) and nicknames such as @daily are explained too.
Importing a saved run into your account is coming soon. Until then, your last runs stay in this browser only, and you can download your files.
How to use
- Type or paste one cron expression per line.
- Read the plain-language meaning in English and Arabic.
- Set how many upcoming runs to list when you enter one expression.
- Compare the times with your server's time zone, because the list is in UTC.
What it checks and how it works
The explanation comes from cronstrue, an open-source library that turns a cron expression into words, using its English and Arabic locales. The upcoming run times are worked out by this tool for a standard five-field expression (minute, hour, day of month, month, day of week) in UTC, following the Linux crontab(5) manual page: fields take lists, ranges and steps, names such as JAN and MON, and 0 or 7 for Sunday. When both the day-of-month and day-of-week fields are restricted, the job runs when either one matches. The macros @yearly, @annually, @monthly, @weekly, @daily, @midnight and @hourly are expanded.
Limits: the run list does not support seconds or year fields, the question mark, L, W and # (Quartz extensions), or time zones other than UTC, although cronstrue can still explain some of those expressions in words. Cron dialects differ, so check your scheduler's own documentation. The Arabic wording is cronstrue's own and is shown unedited, so some phrases may read awkwardly.
Sources
- Linux manual page: crontab(5) opened 29 Oct 2026
- cRonstrue (npm package, MIT): turns cron expressions into readable text opened 29 Oct 2026
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Questions
About this tool
Under crontab(5), when both the day-of-month and day-of-week fields are restricted, the job runs when either matches. For example, 30 4 1,15 * 5 runs at 04:30 on the 1st and 15th of each month and on every Friday.
cronstrue can explain some of them in words, but the list of upcoming runs is for five-field expressions. Seconds, year, ?, L, W and # are not supported there.
UTC. Cron uses the time zone of the machine or service that runs it, so convert the times to match your scheduler.
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