Cron Expression Explainer
Paste a 5-field cron expression to read it as a plain-English sentence, with a breakdown of every field. Runs entirely in your browser.
About the Cron Expression Explainer
The Cron Expression Explainer turns a standard 5-field cron expression into a plain-English sentence so you can confirm a schedule means what you think it does. It reads the minute, hour, day-of-month, month, and day-of-week fields, supports wildcards, steps, ranges, and lists, and shows the breakdown for each field. It is built for developers and WordPress admins who set up system cron jobs, including the wp-cron.php job many hosts use. Everything runs in your browser, so nothing you type is uploaded.
How it works
- Type a 5-field cron expression into the input, or click one of the common presets.
- Read the plain-English description that updates as you type.
- Check the per-field breakdown to see how each of the five fields is interpreted.
- If the expression is invalid, read the inline error to find the field that needs fixing.
Features
- Live translation of a 5-field cron expression into a readable sentence.
- Support for wildcards (*), steps (*/n), ranges (a-b), and lists (a,b,c).
- Per-field breakdown for minute, hour, day-of-month, month, and day-of-week.
- One-click presets: every minute, hourly, daily at midnight, weekly, and more.
- Inline error message that points to the field with the problem.
Frequently asked questions
Which cron format does this use?
It uses the standard 5-field format: minute, hour, day-of-month, month, day-of-week. It does not include the optional seconds field or the year field that some schedulers add.
What syntax can I use in a field?
Each field accepts a single value, a wildcard (*), a step (*/n), a range (a-b), or a comma list (a,b,c). Month and day-of-week also accept names like Jan or Mon.
How is day-of-week numbered?
Sunday is 0, Monday is 1, through Saturday is 6. The value 7 is also accepted as Sunday, matching common cron implementations.
Does this work with WP-Cron?
WP-Cron uses named recurrence intervals registered with wp_schedule_event(), not cron syntax. This tool is for the system cron job that runs wp-cron.php, for example a line that calls it every 5 minutes.
Is anything sent to a server?
No. Parsing and translation run entirely in your browser. The expression you type is never uploaded or logged.