Cron Expression Generator & Explainer
Generate cron expressions from plain English or decode one into a schedule with its next 5 run times. Runs in your browser, free.
About this tool
Work with cron syntax in both directions. Type a schedule in plain English (every weekday at 8 am) to generate the expression, or paste an existing 5-field expression to get a human-readable meaning, a field-by-field breakdown, and the next five run times so you can confirm it does what you intended.
Cron syntax powers crontab, GitHub Actions schedules, Kubernetes CronJobs, and the schedule triggers in automation tools like n8n and Make, and it is notoriously easy to get the field order wrong. Checking the computed next runs is the fastest way to catch a mistake before it ships.
Common uses
- Write the schedule for a GitHub Actions workflow or Kubernetes CronJob.
- Decode a cryptic crontab line someone else wrote before touching it.
- Verify a schedule change by reading the next five run times.
Automate via API
The same conversion is available as a REST endpoint for scripts, pipelines, and backends:
curl -X POST https://payloadly.com/api/v1/tools/cron-expression-generator \ -H "Content-Type: text/plain" \ -H "X-Api-Key: YOUR_API_KEY" \ --data-binary @input.txt
Frequently asked questions
Is my data uploaded to a server?
No. This tool runs entirely in your browser using JavaScript, and there are no ads on the page. Nothing you paste or drop here is uploaded, logged, or stored, and you can verify that yourself: open your browser's developer tools and watch the Network tab while you convert (no requests leave the page), or disconnect from the internet after the page loads and keep working.
Which cron flavor is supported?
Standard 5-field cron: minute, hour, day of month, month, day of week, with *, ranges (9-17), lists (1,15), steps (*/5), and month/day names (jan, mon). Seconds fields (Quartz) and macros like @daily are not standard cron; for @daily just use 0 0 * * *.
How are day-of-month and day-of-week combined?
Per POSIX cron, when both fields are restricted the job runs when either matches, which surprises almost everyone. 0 0 13 * 5 runs on the 13th of the month AND on every Friday, not only on Friday the 13th. The explainer makes this visible in the computed next runs.
What timezone are the next run times in?
UTC, which is what most CI systems and clusters use by default. If your crontab runs in a server's local timezone, shift accordingly, or better, set CRON_TZ explicitly where supported.
Is there a size limit or a fee?
The browser tool is free with no signup and comfortably handles files up to tens of megabytes (limited by your device's memory). For automated or bulk processing inside your own scripts and pipelines, use the paid REST API.
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