Regex and cron

Cron Expression for Every 15 Minutes

On every quarter hour (:00, :15, :30 and :45), every hour of every day. Copy it, check the next runs in your time zone and grab a snippet for your platform.

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Cron expression

*/15 * * * *
Customize
*/15minuteMinute: every 15 minutes: :00, :15, :30 and :45*hourHour: every hour*day (month)Day of month: every day of the month*monthMonth: every month*day (week)Day of week: every day of the week

On every quarter hour (:00, :15, :30 and :45), every hour of every day.

Time zone
Run times, the week view and the snippets use this zone. It starts as your device's zone.
Show times as 9:00 AM instead of 09:00.

Next runs

Each run in your selected time zone, with the same moment in UTC. Daylight saving changes follow cronie, the cron on most Linux servers.
Copy run times (ISO 8601)

Next 7 days

Each square is one hour of local time in your selected zone. Darker squares have more runs. Daylight saving changes are not drawn.

Use it on your platform

Copy-ready config for each scheduler. Dialects differ: some only run in UTC, some can't do seconds, Cloudflare and AWS number weekdays from 1 = Sunday. The snippet handles the conversion and says what changed.
A line for crontab -e on Linux or macOS (Vixie cron, cronie).on.schedule for a workflow, with the timezone field GitHub added in March 2026 (UTC when omitted).A CronJob manifest with the timeZone field (Kubernetes 1.27+).Cron Triggers in wrangler.toml for a Worker. Runs in UTC and numbers weekdays from 1 = Sunday.crons in vercel.json plus the route it calls. Runs in UTC.EventBridge Scheduler (any time zone, recommended by AWS) and a legacy EventBridge scheduled rule (UTC).A .timer unit with OnCalendar=, the systemd replacement for cron.
Runs as writtenRuns in your time zone
crontab -e
Copy crontab -eDownload my-job.crontab
# ┌───────────── minute (0–59)
# │ ┌─────────── hour (0–23)
# │ │ ┌───────── day of month (1–31)
# │ │ │ ┌─────── month (1–12)
# │ │ │ │ ┌───── day of week (0–6, Sunday = 0)
# │ │ │ │ │
# * * * * *  command
CRON_TZ=UTC
*/15 * * * *  /path/to/my-job.sh >> /var/log/my-job.log 2>&1
  • CRON_TZ=UTC is honored by cronie (Fedora, RHEL, Arch). Other cron daemons ignore it and use the server's time zone, so check timedatectl first.
  • Edit with crontab -e. Cron starts the next run even if the last one is still going; wrap the command in flock -n /tmp/my-job.lock to prevent overlaps.

Need scheduled jobs, queues and monitoring that never miss a run? Talk to our team

Quick answer

The cron expression for every 15 minutes is */15 * * * *. The step */15 in the minute field matches 0, 15, 30 and 45, so the job runs on every quarter hour: four times an hour and 96 times a day. The list 0,15,30,45 * * * * is exactly equivalent, and some teams find it easier to read.

  • Live next runs
  • Any time zone
  • Field-by-field breakdown
  • Seven platform snippets
  • Daylight saving aware

How to use this schedule

  1. 1Copy */15 * * * * with the Copy expression button.
  2. 2Check Next runs in your time zone to confirm it fires when you expect, including around daylight saving changes.
  3. 3Pick your platform under Use it on your platform and copy the ready-made crontab line, workflow, manifest or timer.
  4. 4Need a different time or day? Click Customize to open it in the cron expression generator and change any field.

What does */15 * * * * mean?

*/15 takes the minute range 0–59 and keeps every fifteenth value starting at 0, which leaves exactly the quarter hours. Four values, evenly spaced, and the gap from :45 to the next :00 is also 15 minutes because 15 divides 60.

The step and the list are interchangeable, and you can shift the whole pattern by starting the range later:

ExpressionRuns at
*/15 * * * *:00, :15, :30, :45
0,15,30,45 * * * *:00, :15, :30, :45
5-59/15 * * * *:05, :20, :35, :50
7-59/15 * * * *:07, :22, :37, :52

Use the list when you want readers to see the exact minutes at a glance; use the step when you might change the interval later.

Why run a job every 15 minutes?

Quarter hours are a natural bucket for reports, charts and usage summaries, so a lot of aggregation work runs on this rhythm. The expert move is to run a couple of minutes after each boundary rather than exactly on it.

A job at :15 that summarizes 10:00–10:15 starts while events stamped 10:14:59 may still be in flight. Schedule it with 2-59/15 * * * * (runs at :02, :17, :32, :47) and have it process the window that just closed. Late data lands in the right bucket, and you also step away from the burst of other jobs firing at :00, :15, :30 and :45.

At 96 runs a day this is a light schedule for most work. If a single run can take longer than 15 minutes, though (a large export, a slow backup), it will collide with the next one. Add a lock or move to every 30 minutes. For tighter feedback, every 10 minutes gives 144 runs a day.

What does each field in */15 * * * * mean?

FieldValueAllowedMeaning
Minute*/150–59every 15 minutes: :00, :15, :30 and :45
Hour*0–23every hour
Day of month*1–31every day of the month
Month*1–12, JAN–DECevery month
Day of week*0–7 (0 and 7 are Sunday), SUN–SATevery day of the week

Read together: On every quarter hour (:00, :15, :30 and :45), every hour of every day.

How do I adjust */15 * * * * to my own schedule?

Small edits to */15 * * * * cover most real-world needs:

ExpressionWhat it does
0,15,30,45 * * * *The same quarter-hour schedule as an explicit list
2-59/15 * * * *Two minutes after each quarter hour, so late data for the previous window has arrived
*/15 9-17 * * 1-5Every 15 minutes from 09:00 to 17:45 on weekdays
*/15 * * * 0,6Every 15 minutes on weekends only
*/30 * * * *Every 30 minutes, half as often

Need something else? Click Customize at the top of the page to open this schedule in the cron expression generator and change any field.

Related schedules: Every 10 minutes · Every 30 minutes · Every hour · Business hours (every hour)

Browse all schedules in the cron schedule library.

How do I run */15 * * * * in crontab, GitHub Actions, Kubernetes and the cloud?

PlatformWrite it asTime zone
Linux crontab*/15 * * * *Server's time zone; CRON_TZ= in cronie
GitHub Actions- cron: "*/15 * * * *"UTC by default; add timezone: (IANA name)
Kubernetes CronJobschedule: "*/15 * * * *"Set timeZone: (1.27+)
Cloudflare Workers*/15 * * * *UTC only; numbers weekdays from 1 = Sunday, so use names
Vercel Cron Jobs*/15 * * * *UTC only; more than once a day needs Pro (Hobby: once a day)
AWS EventBridge Schedulercron(*/15 * * * ? *)Takes a time zone; legacy scheduled rules are UTC only
systemd timerOnCalendar=*-*-* *:0/15:00Add a zone after the time, e.g. Europe/London

In a crontab (crontab -e), the full line looks like this:

*/15 * * * *  /path/to/job.sh >> /var/log/job.log 2>&1

The live panel at the top of the page builds complete, copy-ready files for each platform (workflow, CronJob manifest, wrangler.toml, vercel.json, AWS CLI and systemd units) and can shift the schedule to UTC for platforms that need it.

What can go wrong with */15 * * * *?

  • A job that summarizes the last quarter hour and runs exactly at :15 can miss events still being written. Run at 2-59/15 and process the window that just closed.
  • */15 in the hour field is a different schedule entirely: 0 */15 * * * runs at 00:00 and 15:00 only.
  • Quarter hours are popular, so shared databases and rate-limited APIs see bursts at :00, :15, :30 and :45. Offsetting by a few minutes costs nothing.
  • If a run can take more than 15 minutes, guard it with flock -n /tmp/job.lock your-command or choose a longer interval.
  • In a zone with daylight saving time, a schedule with * in the minute or hour field follows the wall clock: the spring-forward night loses an hour of runs and the fall-back night repeats one. Servers on UTC never see this.

Frequently asked questions

Yes. Both match minutes 0, 15, 30 and 45 of every hour. The step form is shorter; the list form makes the exact minutes visible.
96 times: four runs an hour for 24 hours.
Shift the start of the step. 5-59/15 * * * * runs at :05, :20, :35 and :50, and 10-59/15 * * * * runs at :10, :25, :40 and :55.
Yes. Restrict the hour and weekday fields: */15 9-17 * * 1-5 runs from 09:00 to 17:45, Monday to Friday. Use 9-16 in the hour field if the last run should be 16:45.

Last updated by the Playxoft engineering team.

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