Regex and cron

Cron Expression for Every 5 Minutes

At every fifth minute of every hour (:00, :05, :10 … :55), 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

*/5 * * * *
Customize
*/5minuteMinute: every 5 minutes: :00, :05, :10 … :55*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 fifth minute of every hour (:00, :05, :10 … :55), 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
*/5 * * * *  /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.

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Quick answer

The cron expression for every 5 minutes is */5 * * * *. The */5 in the minute field means every fifth minute starting from 0, so the job runs at :00, :05, :10 and so on through :55, which is 12 times an hour and 288 times a day. The four asterisks leave the hour, day of month, month and day of week unrestricted.

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

How to use this schedule

  1. 1Copy */5 * * * * 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 */5 * * * * mean?

The first field is the minute. */5 is a step: take every value the field allows (0–59) and keep every fifth one, starting with the first. That gives 0, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55. It is shorthand for writing that list out in full, and 0-59/5 means exactly the same thing.

The schedule is tied to the clock, not to when you saved it. If you install the job at 10:03, the first run is at 10:05, then 10:10. Cron never counts "five minutes since the last run", so the gap only stays exactly five minutes because 5 divides 60 evenly.

To keep the same rhythm but move it off the busiest minutes, shift the start of the step: 2-59/5 runs at :02, :07, :12 … :57.

When should a job run every 5 minutes?

Five minutes is the sweet spot for work that should feel near real time without hammering anything:

  • Health checks and uptime pings for internal services
  • Draining a retry queue or sending batched notifications
  • Refreshing a cache, a sitemap or a materialized view
  • Pulling new rows from a partner API that has no webhooks

Before you pick it, check two numbers: how long one run takes, and how many requests 288 runs a day make against any rate-limited API. If a run can take longer than five minutes, add a lock (see the pitfalls below) or choose every 10 minutes. If you only need fresh data during the working day, restrict the hour and weekday fields instead of running all night.

What does each field in */5 * * * * mean?

FieldValueAllowedMeaning
Minute*/50–59every 5 minutes: :00, :05, :10 … :55
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 fifth minute of every hour (:00, :05, :10 … :55), every day.

How do I adjust */5 * * * * to my own schedule?

Small edits to */5 * * * * cover most real-world needs:

ExpressionWhat it does
2-59/5 * * * *Every 5 minutes, offset to :02, :07 … :57 to avoid the top-of-the-hour rush
*/5 9-17 * * 1-5Every 5 minutes from 09:00 to 17:55, Monday to Friday
*/5 * * * 1-5Every 5 minutes, weekdays only
*/5 0-5 * * *Every 5 minutes overnight, from 00:00 to 05:55
*/10 * * * *Every 10 minutes, half as often
*/5 * * * * *Every 5 seconds in 6-field syntax for Spring and node-cron (Quartz needs ? in a day field; crontab has no seconds)

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 10 minutes · Every 15 minutes · Every hour

Browse all schedules in the cron schedule library.

How do I run */5 * * * * in crontab, GitHub Actions, Kubernetes and the cloud?

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

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

*/5 * * * *  /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 */5 * * * *?

  • Cron starts the next run even if the previous one is still going. Wrap the command in flock -n /tmp/job.lock your-command so a slow run is skipped instead of piling up.
  • On GitHub Actions, five minutes is the shortest schedule allowed, and busy periods can delay scheduled runs, so don't depend on exact timing there.
  • Every */5 job on the internet fires at :00, :05 and so on. If many of your servers call the same API, offset them with 1-59/5, 2-59/5 and so on.
  • Cron emails any output to the crontab owner. At 288 runs a day that floods a mailbox, so redirect it: your-command >> /var/log/job.log 2>&1.
  • 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

Not in Linux crontab: Vixie cron and cronie only accept a step after * or a range, so 0/5 is rejected. Quartz, Spring, AWS EventBridge and Kubernetes read 0/5 as every 5 minutes from 0. Use */5 * * * *, which works everywhere.
No. Cron fires on every clock minute that is divisible by 5, whatever happened before. If a run takes longer than five minutes, the next one starts on schedule and the two overlap unless you add a lock.
Restrict the hour and day-of-week fields: */5 9-17 * * 1-5 runs every 5 minutes from 09:00 to 17:55, Monday to Friday. The hour range is inclusive, so 17 means runs continue until 17:55.
Yes. */5 * * * * is the shortest interval GitHub Actions accepts for scheduled workflows. GitHub reads it in UTC unless you add a timezone field with an IANA name, and runs can start late when GitHub is under heavy load.

Last updated by the Playxoft engineering team.

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