Cron Expression for Every 5 Minutes — Explained

A cron expression schedules recurring jobs using calendar-like fields. The everyday answer for “run every 5 minutes” in classic five-field cron is:

*/5 * * * *

That means: at minute 0, 5, 10, …, 55 of every hour, every day.

Field order (five-field cron)

Field	Values	In */5 * * * *
Minute	0–59	*/5 (step 5)
Hour	0–23	* (every)
Day of month	1–31	*
Month	1–12	*
Day of week	0–7	*

Some systems (Quartz, Kubernetes CronJob with seconds, AWS variants) add a seconds field or swap day-of-week numbering. Always confirm your scheduler’s dialect.

Step syntax vs lists

• */5 — every 5 units from 0 (0,5,10,…).
• 0,5,10,15,20,25,30,35,40,45,50,55 — same minutes, spelled out.
• 1-59/5 — starts at 1 (1,6,11,…) — not the same as */5.

If you need “every 5 minutes starting at :01,” you want an explicit range/step, not the default star-step.

Six-field and “every 5 minutes”

When a leading seconds field exists, “every 5 minutes” is often:

0 */5 * * * *

(second 0 of every 5th minute). Putting */5 in the seconds field would fire every 5 seconds, which is a different load profile entirely.

Practical caveats

1. Overlap — if a job still runs at minute 10 when minute 15 starts, you need locking or a longer interval.
2. Time zones — cron uses the host or configured TZ; UTC vs local midnight matters for day boundaries more than for every-5-minute jobs, but DST still exists.
3. Managed clouds — EventBridge, Cloud Scheduler, and GitHub Actions have their own cron quirks (and sometimes no seconds field).
4. Human readable checks — never ship a schedule you have not expanded into the next few fire times.

Use DevSnip Cron Helper

DevSnip Cron Helper explains cron in plain English and previews the next runs so you can verify */5 * * * * before it hits production. It runs in your browser — useful when the expression is sitting next to deployment credentials you should not paste into random sites.

Privacy one-liner: expressions are parsed locally; nothing is uploaded.

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 5 minutes only during business hours?

Combine minute step with an hour range, e.g. */5 9-17 * * 1-5 (dialect-dependent). Preview next runs carefully around Monday open and Friday close.

Why did my Kubernetes CronJob not fire?

Check the schedule field format, timezone (timeZone on newer APIs), and whether the job is suspended. Also confirm you did not accidentally use a six-field string in a five-field slot.

What about every 5 minutes starting now?

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