What does */5 * * * * mean?

In a 5-field expression it means minute 0, 5, 10, and so on, every hour, every day. The schedule fires every 5 minutes.

What is the order of the 5 fields?

Minute, hour, day of month, month, day of week. Ranges are 0-59, 0-23, 1-31, 1-12, and 0-7 where both 0 and 7 are Sunday.

What is the difference between standard cron and Quartz?

Quartz adds a seconds field and uses ? when day-of-month or day-of-week should be left unset. It also supports L, W, and #. Standard 5-field cron does not.

What timezone do GitHub Actions and Vercel Cron use?

UTC. A schedule of 0 9 * * 1-5 runs at 09:00 UTC, which is not 9am in every local timezone.

How do I run every weekday at 9am?

Use 0 9 * * 1-5. That is minute 0, hour 9, Monday through Friday. Set the timezone here to the zone you mean, and remember hosted crons stay on UTC.

How do day-of-month and day-of-week combine?

In standard cron, if both are restricted, the job runs when either matches. That is OR, not AND. Quartz avoids the ambiguity by setting one of them to ?.

Cron expression builder

Build or paste a cron schedule, read it in English, and preview the next runs in your timezone. Runs in your browser. Nothing is sent.

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No signup
Nothing stored

Dialect

Every n values (`*/n`)

Minute: */5

Presets

Timezone

Valid

Every 5 minutes

Next runs

Next 10 runs
UTC	UTC	Relative
16 Oct 2026, 10:25	16 Oct 2026, 10:25	in under a minute
16 Oct 2026, 10:30	16 Oct 2026, 10:30	in 6 min
16 Oct 2026, 10:35	16 Oct 2026, 10:35	in 11 min
16 Oct 2026, 10:40	16 Oct 2026, 10:40	in 16 min
16 Oct 2026, 10:45	16 Oct 2026, 10:45	in 21 min
16 Oct 2026, 10:50	16 Oct 2026, 10:50	in 26 min
16 Oct 2026, 10:55	16 Oct 2026, 10:55	in 31 min
16 Oct 2026, 11:00	16 Oct 2026, 11:00	in 36 min
16 Oct 2026, 11:05	16 Oct 2026, 11:05	in 41 min
16 Oct 2026, 11:10	16 Oct 2026, 11:10	in 46 min

Fields

Field breakdown
Field	Value	Meaning
Minute	*/5	Every 5
Hour	*	Every value
Day of month	*	Every value
Month	*	Every value
Day of week	*	Every value

Wrap lines

1*/5 * * * * /usr/local/bin/app

How it works

01
Pick a preset or build fields
Start from a preset or set minute, hour, day, month, and weekday. The expression stays in sync with the fields.
02
Read the English and check the next runs
The sentence and the next 10 times use the timezone you pick. Compare them with UTC before you deploy.
03
Copy for crontab, GitHub Actions, Vercel, or Kubernetes
Each snippet is ready to paste. GitHub Actions and Vercel Cron stay on UTC.

What the five fields mean

A standard expression is minute, hour, day of month, month, then day of week. */5 * * * * fires every five minutes. When both the day of month and the day of week are restricted, standard cron runs the job if either field matches.

GitHub Actions and Vercel Cron evaluate the expression in UTC, so 09:00 in the builder is not 09:00 on those hosts unless the timezone is UTC. Quartz adds seconds and the ?, L, W, and # tokens. The Next.js Dockerfile guide is the closest deploy write-up if the schedule ships with the app.