Regex and cron

Cron Expression for Every 2 Minutes

At every even minute (:00, :02, :04 … :58) of every hour, 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

*/2 * * * *
Customize
*/2minuteMinute: every 2 minutes: :00, :02, :04 … :58*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

At every even minute (:00, :02, :04 … :58) of every hour, 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
*/2 * * * *  /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 2 minutes is */2 * * * *. The */2 step in the minute field keeps every second value from 0 to 59, so the job fires on even minutes: :00, :02, :04 through :58. That is 30 runs an hour and 720 a day. To run on odd minutes instead, use 1-59/2 * * * *.

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

How to use this schedule

  1. 1Copy */2 * * * * 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 */2 * * * * mean?

*/2 is a step over the whole minute range. A step always starts at the field's minimum, which is 0 for minutes, so the job lands on even minutes. Because 60 divides evenly by 2, the rhythm survives the hour boundary: :58 is followed by :00, exactly two minutes later.

To move the job onto odd minutes, start the range at 1:

ExpressionMinutesRuns per hour
*/2 * * * *0, 2, 4 … 5830
1-59/2 * * * *1, 3, 5 … 5930
0-58/2 * * * *0, 2, 4 … 5830

This pair is handy when two jobs share a resource. Schedule one on even minutes and the other on odd minutes, and they take turns without ever starting in the same minute.

When is every 2 minutes the right interval?

Two minutes sits between "as fast as cron goes" and "every five". It fits jobs where a short delay is fine but five minutes feels sluggish:

  • Polling a slow status endpoint for long-running exports
  • Near-real-time sync between two systems without webhooks
  • Alert checks where a two-minute detection window is acceptable

The worst-case delay is easy to reason about: an event that arrives just after a run waits up to two minutes for the next one. If that is too long, go to every minute; if it is comfortably fine, every 5 minutes cuts the run count from 720 to 288 a day.

One platform note: GitHub Actions does not schedule workflows more often than every 5 minutes, so this interval needs a real cron daemon, a Kubernetes CronJob or another scheduler.

What does each field in */2 * * * * mean?

FieldValueAllowedMeaning
Minute*/20–59every 2 minutes: :00, :02, :04 … :58
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: At every even minute (:00, :02, :04 … :58) of every hour, every day.

How do I adjust */2 * * * * to my own schedule?

Small edits to */2 * * * * cover most real-world needs:

ExpressionWhat it does
1-59/2 * * * *Every 2 minutes on odd minutes (:01, :03 … :59)
*/2 8-20 * * *Every 2 minutes from 08:00 to 20:58
*/2 * * * 1-5Every 2 minutes on weekdays only
0-58/2 * * * *The same as */2, written as an explicit range
*/3 * * * *Every 3 minutes (:00, :03 … :57)

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 minute · Every 5 minutes · Every 10 minutes · Every 2 hours

Browse all schedules in the cron schedule library.

How do I run */2 * * * * in crontab, GitHub Actions, Kubernetes and the cloud?

PlatformWrite it asTime zone
Linux crontab*/2 * * * *Server's time zone; CRON_TZ= in cronie
GitHub Actions- cron: "*/2 * * * *"UTC by default; add timezone: (IANA name). Runs at most every 5 minutes
Kubernetes CronJobschedule: "*/2 * * * *"Set timeZone: (1.27+)
Cloudflare Workers*/2 * * * *UTC only; numbers weekdays from 1 = Sunday, so use names
Vercel Cron Jobs*/2 * * * *UTC only; more than once a day needs Pro (Hobby: once a day)
AWS EventBridge Schedulercron(*/2 * * * ? *)Takes a time zone; legacy scheduled rules are UTC only
systemd timerOnCalendar=*-*-* *:0/2:00Add a zone after the time, e.g. Europe/London

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

*/2 * * * *  /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 */2 * * * *?

  • */2 * * * * and 0 */2 * * * look alike but are worlds apart: the first runs every 2 minutes, the second every 2 hours. Check which field the step sits in.
  • Two minutes is short enough for a slow network call to push one run into the next. Guard the command with flock -n /tmp/job.lock so a stuck run doesn't stack up copies.
  • GitHub Actions won't schedule anything more often than every 5 minutes, so this expression doesn't give you 2-minute runs there.
  • 1/2 is Quartz and Kubernetes syntax for odd minutes; Vixie cron and cronie (Linux crontab) reject a step after a single number. 1-59/2 is the portable spelling.
  • 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

Use 1-59/2 * * * *. The range starts at 1 and the step of 2 keeps 1, 3, 5 and so on up to 59.
720 times: 30 runs an hour multiplied by 24 hours.
No. The step is in the first field, which is the minute, so it runs every 2 minutes. Every 2 hours is 0 */2 * * *, with the step in the second field and a fixed minute in the first.
Yes. Schedule one with */2 * * * * for even minutes and the other with 1-59/2 * * * * for odd minutes. Each runs every 2 minutes and they always take turns.

Last updated by the Playxoft engineering team.

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