Cron Job Helper — Examples

Back to the overview: Cron Job Helper · Open the live tool: www.jpkc.com/tools/cron/

The Manual explains every tab in detail. This page shows concrete expressions — what they mean, how to click them together in the Builder, and what to watch for in the Next Scheduled Runs. The interface is in English, so field and button names are quoted as-is.

Example 1: Daily at 3 AM

The classic for backups and maintenance — run it when little else is happening.

0 3 * * *

How to build it: in the Builder, set Minute to Specific value 0, Hour to Specific value 3, and leave the other three fields on Every. Faster via the Daily 3 AM preset. The plain-text line confirms "at 3:00", and the Next Scheduled Runs show the next 03:00 occurrence each time. Read it as: minute 0, hour 3, every day, every month, every weekday.

Example 2: Every 15 minutes

Typical for queue workers, web cron calls or scheduler triggers.

*/15 * * * *

In the Builder, set Minute to Every N Minutes (/N)* and enter 15 — or click the Every 15 min preset. The */15 means "every 15 units", i.e. minutes 0, 15, 30 and 45 of every hour. Mind the step value: */15 counts from the field minimum (0), not from "now".

Example 3: Weekdays, on the hour during office hours

Monday to Friday, 9 AM to 5 PM only — e.g. for tasks tied to staff or customers.

0 9-17 * * 1-5

Here you combine two modes: Hour on Range (A–B) 9–17 and Day of Week on Range (A–B) 1–5 (Monday = 1, Friday = 5). Minute is 0. The result: on the hour, from 9 to 17, on weekdays. If you only want it once on weekdays (say 08:30), use 30 8 * * 1-5.

Example 4: Monthly on the 1st at 4 AM

Month-end closing, reports, log rotation.

0 4 1 * *

Minute 0, Hour 4, Day of Month Specific value 1, month and weekday stay *. This runs on the first day of every month at 04:00. Related: the Monthly 1st preset (0 0 1 * *) for midnight, or @monthly as a special string in Manual Input.

Example 5: Once at startup — @reboot

Some jobs should run not at a clock time but once at boot — for instance to launch a worker or kick off a cleanup script.

@reboot

Type @reboot into the Manual Input field. The tool recognises the special string and shows no times in the Next Scheduled Runs, just a note that the job only runs at system startup — because @reboot has no recurring schedule to project into the future. Unlike the other @ strings, @reboot therefore cannot be expanded into five fields.

Example 6: Weekends at midnight

Saturday and Sunday, each at 00:00 — via a list in the day-of-week field.

0 0 * * 6,0

Set Day of Week to List (A,B,C) 6,0 (Saturday = 6, Sunday = 0), minute and hour to 0. The Weekends preset sets exactly this. The list 6,0 nicely shows that Sunday can be written both as 0 and, in some crons, as 7 — the tool uses the 0 notation.

CMS example: WordPress via a real cron instead of WP-Cron

WordPress's built-in WP-Cron only fires on page loads and is unreliable on low-traffic sites. The CMS & Frameworks tab shows the robust path.

Step 1 — disable WP-Cron in wp-config.php:

define( 'DISABLE_WP_CRON', true );

Step 2 — add a real cron every 5 minutes via WP-CLI:

*/5 * * * *  www-data  wp cron event run --due-now --path=/var/www/html --quiet

Note the fields of a system crontab line (e.g. in /etc/cron.d/): schedule, then user (www-data), then command. The WP-CLI path is faster than a curl call because it needs no HTTP request. If you do want curl, the tab provides the alternative on wp-cron.php.

Docker example: cron in a DDEV project

In the Docker / DDEV tab, the simplest DDEV path is a host cron that calls into the running container via ddev exec.

*/5 * * * *  cd /home/user/myproject && ddev exec php artisan schedule:run >> /dev/null 2>&1

Important: ddev exec only works while the project is running (ddev start) — otherwise the line fails. For a persistent run independent of the host cron, the tab shows the recommended variant: a custom DDEV service in .ddev/docker-compose.cron.yaml with a while true; … sleep 60 loop. For WordPress in DDEV there is the ready-made line ddev wp cron event run --due-now.

More context: the overview for the big picture, the Manual for every tab, and the Tips & Tricks for the pitfalls. Try it all directly in the tool.