Scheduling
Cron Expression Translator
Paste a cron expression to translate it into a human-friendly schedule. Supports 5-field and 6-field cron syntax.
The Cron Expression Translator converts cron syntax into a plain-language schedule. It explains each field, highlights the effective run times, and helps you confirm that a job will run at the expected interval.
Translation
A plain-language summary plus a breakdown of each field.
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Seconds
Not used
Minutes
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Hours
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Day of month
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Month
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Day of week
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Schedule builder
Pick a schedule and generate a cron expression.
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What this tool does
The Cron Expression Translator converts cron syntax into a plain-language schedule. It explains each field, highlights the effective run times, and helps you confirm that a job will run at the expected interval. This is especially useful when a small typo could trigger a task too often or not at all.
When to use this tool
Use it when you are setting up a scheduled job, reviewing an existing cron entry, or troubleshooting timing issues in production. If you are coordinating with product teams, you can validate the exact schedule before making a change. It pairs well with Timestamp Converter when you need to double-check time zones or convert a schedule into local time.
How it works
The tool parses the cron fields, applies standard cron rules, and builds a summary sentence. It also breaks down minutes, hours, day-of-month, month, and day-of-week into readable ranges. If the expression includes seconds, the additional field is interpreted and displayed alongside the rest of the schedule.
Example use case
You inherit a cron entry that reads 0 2 * * 1-5 and need to confirm it runs on weekdays at 2:00 AM.
Paste it into the translator, read the summary, and confirm the field-by-field breakdown. If the team expects a
15-minute interval instead, adjust the minute field and regenerate the expression using the builder.
Use cases
- Explain a cron schedule to non-technical teammates.
- Review a scheduled job during incident troubleshooting.
- Build a weekly report schedule and confirm its timing.
Notes & limitations
Cron behavior varies slightly across systems, especially when using Quartz or cloud schedulers. This tool uses standard cron rules and flags unusual tokens so you can verify them in your runtime environment. Daylight saving time and server time zones can shift actual run times, so always confirm the system time configuration.
If your schedule relies on last-day-of-month or business-day logic, confirm that your scheduler supports the syntax you plan to deploy. When possible, document the intent in plain language alongside the cron entry so future maintainers can verify the schedule without guessing.
