Cron Expression Parser

Paste a 5-field cron expression and get a plain-English description.

Paste a standard 5-field cron expression and get back a plain-English description of when it runs, like "every day at 2:30 AM" or "every Monday and Friday at midnight." Useful for double-checking a crontab entry, a CI/CD schedule, or a cloud function trigger before deploying it, since a single misplaced field can silently change a job from daily to hourly. Parsing runs entirely client-side.

Runs in your browser // nothing is uploaded

Runs on your device. This tool processes your file inside this browser tab. Nothing is uploaded, so it also works offline once the page has loaded, and closing the tab discards the file from memory.

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Details

Runs
In your browser
Files uploaded
No
Cost per run
Free
Sign-in
Not required
Works offline
Yes, once loaded

Last updated 2026-08-12

Common questions

What format does it expect?

Standard 5-field cron: minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week.

Does it support special characters like * and /?

Yes - wildcards, ranges (1-5), lists (1,3,5), and step values (*/15) are all parsed.

Can I use this for AWS or Kubernetes cron schedules?

Both use the same 5-field cron syntax, so this works for verifying CronJob and EventBridge schedule expressions.

Does it upload my expression?

No - parsing happens entirely in your browser.

Use this from your code

This tool is also a REST endpoint, so you can run it in a pipeline instead of by hand. It is free and needs no API key. See the API reference for every parameter.

curl -X POST https://fileoven.com/api/v1/tools/cron-parser \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"expression":"0 9 * * 1-5"}'

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