Cron Expression Cheat Sheet (Printable PDF)

Cron Syntax

┌───────────── minute (0-59) │ ┌───────────── hour (0-23) │ │ ┌───────────── day of month (1-31) │ │ │ ┌───────────── month (1-12 or JAN-DEC) │ │ │ │ ┌───────────── day of week (0-6 or SUN-SAT) │ │ │ │ │ * * * * * command_to_run

Special Characters

Char	Meaning	Example
`*`	Any value	`* * * * *`
`,`	Value list	`1,15 * * * *`
`-`	Range	`1-5 * * * *`
`/`	Step values	`/15 * * *`

Special Strings

String	Equivalent
`@yearly`	`0 0 1 1 *`
`@monthly`	`0 0 1 * *`
`@weekly`	`0 0 * * 0`
`@daily`	`0 0 * * *`
`@hourly`	`0 * * * *`
`@reboot`	Run at startup

Common Patterns

* * * * *Every minute

*/5 * * * *Every 5 minutes

*/15 * * * *Every 15 minutes

0 * * * *Every hour

0 */2 * * *Every 2 hours

0 */6 * * *Every 6 hours

0 0 * * *Daily midnight

0 9 * * *Daily 9am

0 0 * * 0Weekly Sunday

0 0 * * 1Weekly Monday

0 0 1 * *Monthly 1st

0 0 1 1 *Yearly Jan 1

Business Hours

`0 9-17 * * 1-5`	Hourly 9-5 weekdays
`/30 9-17 * 1-5`	Every 30min business
`0 9 * * 1-5`	Weekdays 9am
`0 17 * * 5`	Friday 5pm
`0 0 * * 6,0`	Weekends midnight

Common Tasks

`0 2 * * *`	Nightly backup (2am)
`/5 * * *`	Health check
`0 0 * * 0`	Weekly log rotation
`0 4 * * *`	Sitemap update
`0 6 1 * *`	Monthly report

Day of Week Reference

Value	0	1	2	3	4	5	6
Day	Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat

💡 Tip: In some systems, 7 also represents Sunday

Month Reference

Value	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12
Month	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec

Platform Differences

AWS CloudWatch/EventBridge

6 fields: seconds minute hour day month day-of-week year

0 */5 * * * ? (every 5 min)

Kubernetes CronJob

Standard 5-field with timezone support (v1.27+)

schedule: "*/5 * * * *"

GitHub Actions

Standard 5-field, runs in UTC timezone

cron: '0 9 * * 1-5'

Jenkins

Uses H for hash-based distribution

H */4 * * *