Cron, explained.
Paste a cron expression — see what it actually means, when it next fires, and a visual builder for the cron you haven't written yet.
Plans from $5/mo — cancel any time
Stop guessing crontab
Built for developers and ops who got bit by a misread cron.
Plain-English explainer
Paste any 5- or 6-field cron expression. Get a sentence that says exactly when it fires.
Next-fire preview
See the next 10 firing times in your timezone. No more 'wait, does that include Sunday?'
Visual builder
Pick from dropdowns — minute, hour, day, month, weekday — see the resulting cron live as you change it.
Common patterns library
Every weekday at 9am. Every 5 minutes. Top of every hour. The 20 cron expressions you Google every quarter, in one click.
Multi-flavor support
Standard 5-field crontab + 6-field (with seconds) + Quartz nicknames (@daily, @hourly, ...).
Save your schedules
Every cron you build — name it, comment it. Pro accounts cloud-sync across machines.
Three steps
From a cryptic schedule to a tested one.
Paste or build
Start from a library pattern, paste an existing cron, or build with dropdowns.
Read
Plain-English explanation + next 10 firing times update live.
Ship
Copy into crontab, GitHub Actions, k8s CronJob, or wherever cron runs.
Simple pricing
Pick a plan and stop second-guessing crontab.
For solo devs / SREs
- 1000 explanations / mo
- 200 saved schedules
- Visual builder + library
- Next-10 preview
For platform teams
- 50000 explanations / mo
- 5000 saved schedules
- Cloud sync + team library
- Quartz / 6-field flavor
- Priority support
Frequently asked
Which cron flavors do you support?
Standard 5-field crontab, 6-field with seconds, and Quartz-style nicknames (@daily, @hourly, @reboot). The flavor selector tells you which features are supported.
Does my cron leave my browser?
No. Parsing, explanation and next-fire computation all run client-side. Only saved schedules sync to the cloud when you opt in.
What timezone is used for next-fire times?
Your browser's local timezone by default. Pro accounts can pin a fixed timezone (handy for shared team schedules).
Do I get a free trial?
No — CronExplain is a paid tool from $5/mo. The library and demo on this page show what you get.
How do I cancel?
From the account page or by email. Cancellation stops the next renewal — your remaining time stays usable.