Cron Expression Cheat Sheet & Examples

Cron expressions are the backbone of scheduled tasks in Unix, Linux, macOS, CI/CD pipelines, cloud functions, and container orchestration. They look cryptic at first — 0 */6 * * 1-5 — but once you understand the five (or six) fields, you can schedule anything. This cheat sheet covers the standard 5-field cron syntax, extended 6-field syntax (with seconds), every special character, and dozens of real-world examples you can copy-paste into your crontab, GitHub Actions, or Kubernetes CronJob. Cron Syntax: The 5 Fields A standard cron expression has five fields separated by spaces: ┌───────────── minute (0–59) │ ┌───────────── hour (0–23) │ │ ┌───────────── day of month (1–31) │ │ │ ┌───────────── month (1–12 or JAN–DEC) │ │ │ │ ┌───────────── day of week (0–7 or SUN–SAT, 0 and 7 = Sunday) │ │ │ │ │ * * * * * Each field can contain a single value, a range, a list, a step, or a wildcard. The expression fires when all five fields match the current time. Special Characters Explained Character