Cron and Quartz expressions

cronpad accepts standard Unix cron (five fields, optionally a sixth for seconds, plus @daily-style descriptors) and Quartz cron (six or seven fields with the special characters ?, L, W and #). Both are evaluated in the job’s timezone.

Standard cron

┌──────────── second (optional, 0–59)
│ ┌────────── minute (0–59)
│ │ ┌──────── hour (0–23)
│ │ │ ┌────── day of month (1–31)
│ │ │ │ ┌──── month (1–12 or JAN–DEC)
│ │ │ │ │ ┌── day of week (0–6 or SUN–SAT; 0 = Sunday)
│ │ │ │ │ │
* * * * * *

Syntax	Meaning	Example
`*`	Every value	`* * * * *` every minute
`,`	List	`0 9,18 * * *` at 09:00 and 18:00
`-`	Range	`0 9 * * 1-5` 09:00 Monday–Friday
`/`	Step	`/15 * * *` every 15 minutes
Names	Months and weekdays	`0 0 * JAN,JUL MON`

Examples

Expression	Fires
`/5 * * *`	Every 5 minutes
`0 * * * *`	At the start of every hour
`30 2 * * *`	02:30 every day
`0 9 * * 1-5`	09:00 on weekdays
`0 0 1 * *`	Midnight on the 1st of every month
`/30 * * * *`	Every 30 seconds (six fields: seconds first)

Descriptors

Descriptor	Equivalent
`@yearly`, `@annually`	`0 0 1 1 *`
`@monthly`	`0 0 1 * *`
`@weekly`	`0 0 * * 0`
`@daily`, `@midnight`	`0 0 * * *`
`@hourly`	`0 * * * *`
`@every 90m`	Every 90 minutes, measured as a fixed duration (not wall-clock aligned)

Quartz cron

Quartz expressions always include seconds and may include a year:

seconds minutes hours day-of-month month day-of-week [year]

Differences from standard cron:

Day of week is 1–7 with 1 = Sunday (names SUN–SAT also work and are clearer).
Exactly one of day-of-month and day-of-week must be ? (“no specific value”), unless both fields are *.
Extra special characters:

Character	Field	Meaning	Example
`?`	day-of-month, day-of-week	No specific value	`0 0 9 ? * MON`
`L`	day-of-month	Last day of the month	`0 0 18 L * ?`
`L-n`	day-of-month	n days before the last day	`0 0 9 L-3 * ?`
`W`	day-of-month	Nearest weekday to the given day	`0 0 9 15W * ?`
`LW`	day-of-month	Last weekday of the month	`0 0 17 LW * ?`
`nL`	day-of-week	Last given weekday of the month	`0 0 17 ? * 6L` (last Friday)
`n#k`	day-of-week	k-th given weekday of the month	`0 0 9 ? * 6#3` (third Friday)

Examples

Expression	Fires
`0 0 18 L * ?`	18:00 on the last day of every month
`0 0 9 ? * 3#2`	09:00 on the second Tuesday
`0 0 9 15W * ?`	09:00 on the weekday nearest the 15th
`0 0 17 LW * ?`	17:00 on the last weekday of the month
`0 30 10 ? * MON-FRI 2027`	10:30 on weekdays, during 2027 only

cronpad searches at most five years ahead for the next match. An expression that never matches within five years (for example 0 0 0 30 FEB ?) is rejected when you save it.

How cronpad tells them apart

A six-field expression without ?, L, W or # is standard cron with seconds. Seven fields, or any of those characters, means Quartz. Set "kind": "cron" or "kind": "quartz" to be explicit.