Cron Every N Minutes: Quick Cheatsheet

A cron expression schedules recurring jobs with calendar-like fields. The most common ops search after “every minute” is every N minutes — especially 5, 10, 15, and 30 — plus a clean hourly job on the hour. This cheatsheet gives the classic five-field forms (minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week) you can paste into crontab, many cloud schedulers, and CI cron fields.

Copy-ready expressions

Intent	Expression	Fires (examples)
Every 5 minutes	*/5 * * * *	:00, :05, :10, …
Every 10 minutes	*/10 * * * *	:00, :10, :20, …
Every 15 minutes	*/15 * * * *	:00, :15, :30, :45
Every 30 minutes	*/30 * * * *	:00 and :30
Every hour	0 * * * *	1:00, 2:00, 3:00, …

Deep landings on TryDevSnip: every 5, every 10, every 15, every 30, and hourly.

How */N works

In the minute field, */5 means “every 5 minutes starting at 0” — minutes 0, 5, 10, …, 55. Same idea for 10, 15, and 30.

Watch these traps:

• 1-59/5 starts at 1 (1, 6, 11, …) — not the same as */5.
• Spelling out 0,5,10,… is equivalent to */5 on most parsers, but harder to read.
• Six-field dialects (leading seconds) need care: 0 */5 * * * * is often “every 5 minutes”; */5 in the seconds field is every 5 seconds.

Hourly is not */60

There is no minute 60. “Every hour” is almost always minute 0 and hour *:

0 * * * *

For every 2 hours use 0 */2 * * *. For “hourly at :30” use 30 * * * *.

Practical caveats before production

1. Overlap — a 5-minute job that still runs at :10 when :15 starts needs locking or a longer interval.
2. Timezone — cron uses the host or SaaS TZ. “Every 15 minutes” is wall-clock aligned; DST still matters near day boundaries for longer schedules.
3. Dialect — GitHub Actions, Kubernetes CronJobs, Quartz, and EventBridge each have quirks (seconds fields, day-of-week numbering, no seconds).
4. Preview — expand the next few fire times before you ship. Never trust a schedule you have not read aloud.

Cheat sheet and helper on TryDevSnip

Browse the cron expression cheat sheet for the field map and common patterns, or open Cron Helper to explain an expression and preview next runs in your browser. Expressions you paste are not uploaded to our servers for processing.

Also see: every 5 minutes explained, hourly and midnight, timezone vs next runs.

FAQ

Is 0/5 * * * * the same as */5 * * * *?

On many parsers, yes (start at 0, step 5). Verify in your specific cron implementation.

How do I run every 15 minutes only on weekdays?

Combine step and weekday, e.g. */15 * * * 1-5 (dialect-dependent). Preview Monday open and Friday close carefully.

Why did my job fire twice around DST?

Some systems re-evaluate local wall time across the fall-back hour. Prefer UTC for high-frequency jobs when you can.

What about “every 5 minutes starting now”?

Cron is wall-clock aligned, not “5 minutes after deploy.” Use an application timer or workflow sleep for that.