Cron Translator — translate cron expressions to English

Paste any cron expression and CronTool translates it into a clear English sentence. “Every weekday at 09:00”, “Every 15 minutes between 09:00 and 17:59”, “On the last day of every month at midnight” — no syntax knowledge required.

The translator works for standard Unix crontab, AWS EventBridge, Vercel cron, Quartz Scheduler and other extended cron dialects. The next 30+ runs land on a calendar so you can verify the translation visually.

Minute

Hour

Day of month

Month

Day of week

Examples

018***
Every day at 18:00
0*/5***
Every 5 hours
018**1-5
Weekdays at 18:00
001**
Once a month

Cheatsheet

FieldRequiredValues RangeWildcardsminuteYes0-59, - * / hourYes0-59, - * / day of monthYes1-31, - * / L W monthYes1-12, - * /day of weekYes0-7, - * / L

Calendar

View future cron matches in a calendar

April 2026

Showing next 1000 cron schedules

How cron translation works

Each field of the cron expression is parsed independently — wildcards (*), lists (1,3,5), ranges (9-17), steps (*/15), aliases (MON-FRI) and modifiers (L, W, #, ?) all get an English equivalent. The translator then stitches the field translations into a single sentence, ordered for natural reading.

Some translations are surprising. 0 0 * * 1-5 reads as “At 00:00, Monday through Friday”. But 0 0 1 * 1-5 reads as “At 00:00, on day 1 of the month, Monday through Friday” — and in standard cron, that's an OR (either condition), not an AND. The calendar clarifies whichever way your scheduler interprets it.

Cron expressions translated

* * * * * → Every minute.
*/5 * * * * → Every 5 minutes.
0 9 * * 1-5 → At 09:00, Monday through Friday.
0 0 1 * * → At 00:00, on day 1 of the month.
0 0 L * * → At 00:00, on the last day of the month.
30 8,17 * * * → At 08:30 and 17:30, every day.
0 0 1,15 * 1 → At 00:00, on day 1 and 15 of the month, and on Monday.

Translator vs debugger vs validator

The translator answers “what does this mean?”. The debugger answers “why is this not running when I expect?”. The tester answers “is this expression syntactically valid?”. All three use the same parser; they're different angles on the same problem.

Frequently asked questions

How do I translate a cron expression to English?

Paste the cron string into the editor above. CronTool's translator uses cronstrue under the hood to produce a clear English sentence (e.g. `0 9 * * 1-5` → 'At 09:00, Monday through Friday'). The translation updates as you edit, and the calendar shows the next runs in your local timezone.

Can the tool translate English back to a cron expression?

Not directly. The translator goes one way: cron → English. To compose a cron from a human description, use the cron builder — it gives you input boxes per field with examples, then writes the cron string for you.

How accurate is the cron translation?

The translator parses the same syntax used by production schedulers (cronstrue + @datasert/cronjs-parser) and renders an English sentence that matches the matcher's runtime behaviour. Edge cases — `?`, `L`, `W`, `#` modifiers, leap-year February 29ths — are handled. If your scheduler dialect is unusual, double-check the calendar view, which is a literal rendering of the next runs.

Does the cron translator support languages other than English?

Currently English only on this page. The cronstrue library supports dozens of locales (Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, Mandarin, etc.) — we may roll out localised pages in a future update.

Can I share the translation?

Yes — copy the URL after pasting your cron. The cron travels in the URL so anyone who opens the link sees the same translation, calendar and breakdown.

Ready to schedule it?

Point Crontap at any URL. Pick any cron. Done.

WordPress, Shopify, Railway, Cloud Run, Vercel, HubSpot, Ghost, your own box. If it answers HTTP, Crontap can drive it on a clock you can read, in the timezone that actually matters, and page you when something breaks.

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Your next schedule

GET/wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron=1

Schedule

“every 5 minutes”

Next run

in 23s

Cron Translator — translate cron expressions to English

Examples

Cheatsheet

Calendar

April 2026

How cron translation works

Cron expressions translated

Translator vs debugger vs validator

Frequently asked questions

Point Crontap at any URL. Pick any cron. Done.

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