12 Cron Expressions That Cover Most Jobs
Every 15 minutes to once a year, each with its plain-English reading.
By the TurantTools Dev team · Updated October 27, 2026 · 2 min read
A dozen cron schedules cover most jobs. Here they are with the plain-English reading our explainer gives for each.
| Expression | Runs |
|---|---|
| */15 * * * * | Every 15 minutes. |
| 0 * * * * | At minute 0 of every hour. |
| 0 9 * * * | At 09:00. |
| 30 8 * * 1-5 | At 08:30, on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. |
| 0 0 * * 0 | At 00:00, on Sunday. |
| 0 0 1 * * | At 00:00, on day 1 of the month. |
| 0 3 1 */3 * | At 03:00, on day 1 of the month, every 3 months (January, April, July and October). |
| 0 12 * * 6,0 | At 12:00, on Sunday and Saturday. |
| 0 18 * * 5 | At 18:00, on Friday. |
| 15 2 * * * | At 02:15. |
| 0 9-17 * * 1-5 | At minute 0 past hour 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17, on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. |
| 0 0 1 1 * | At 00:00, on day 1 of the month, in January. |
Tips
- Times are in the server's or scheduler's time zone; many cloud schedulers use UTC.
- Spread heavy jobs away from :00, when everyone else's run too (for example 2:15 instead of 2:00).
- Log the start and end of every run so a silent failure shows up.