Cron Expression Syntax Reference

A cron expression is a string used to define scheduled tasks (cron jobs) on Linux/Unix systems, CI/CD pipelines, Azure Functions, AWS Lambda, and .NET BackgroundService schedulers. Understanding cron syntax is essential for automating repetitive tasks.

Cron Expression Format

A standard cron expression has 5 fields: minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week

Special Characters

• * — every value (wildcard)
• */n — every n-th value (step)
• a-b — range from a to b
• a,b,c — list of specific values