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Every 5 minutes
Next 8 run times
- Fri, Oct 16, 2026, 11:25 PM
- Fri, Oct 16, 2026, 11:30 PM
- Fri, Oct 16, 2026, 11:35 PM
- Fri, Oct 16, 2026, 11:40 PM
- Fri, Oct 16, 2026, 11:45 PM
- Fri, Oct 16, 2026, 11:50 PM
- Fri, Oct 16, 2026, 11:55 PM
- Sat, Oct 17, 2026, 12:00 AM
Standard 5-field cron syntax: minute, hour, day of month, month, day of week. Next run times are computed in your browser's local timezone.
What is the cron expression for every 5 minutes?
*/5 * * * * runs a job every 5 minutes, at minutes 0, 5, 10 and so on up to 55 of every hour. The */5 step means every fifth value starting from 0, so the job fires 12 times an hour, 288 times a day and 105,120 times in 2026.
*/5 * * * * field by field
| Field | Allowed | Value | Selects |
|---|---|---|---|
| Minute | 0-59 | */5 | minutes 0, 5, 10 ... 55, 12 times an hour |
| Hour | 0-23 | * | every hour of the day (0-23) |
| Day of month | 1-31 | * | any date |
| Month | 1-12 or JAN-DEC | * | every month |
| Day of week | 0-6 or SUN-SAT (0 = Sunday; many crons also accept 7) | * | any weekday |
With both day fields left as *, every calendar date qualifies, so only the minute and hour decide when it fires.
How often */5 * * * * runs in 2026
- Runs on each matching day: 288.
- Matching days in 2026: 365 of 365.
- Total runs in 2026: 105,120.
- First run of the year: Thu, 1 Jan 2026, 00:00 UTC. Last: Thu, 31 Dec 2026, 23:55 UTC.
These counts use UTC, which has no daylight saving. The run list in the generator shows the next runs in your browser's own time zone instead.
The same schedule in other schedulers
| Scheduler | Write it as | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| crontab (Linux, macOS) | */5 * * * * /usr/local/bin/health-check.sh | Add it with crontab -e. In /etc/crontab a user name goes between the time fields and the command. |
| Kubernetes CronJob | schedule: "*/5 * * * *" | Valid exactly as written; Kubernetes uses the same five-field syntax as crontab. |
| GitHub Actions | - cron: '*/5 * * * *' | Allowed: five minutes is the shortest interval GitHub supports, and runs can start late when Actions is busy. |
| AWS EventBridge | cron(0/5 * * * ? *) | rate(5 minutes) also works, but it is not pinned to :00, :05 and so on. |
| Quartz | 0 0/5 * * * ? | 0/5 in the minutes field, with 0 seconds in front. |
Time zones and daylight saving
Five-minute jobs are aligned to the clock, not to the moment they were installed: they fire at :00, :05, :10 whatever time cron started. A local-time server skips 12 runs on the spring-forward day and adds 12 on the autumn day when an hour repeats. On GitHub Actions this is the tightest schedule allowed and it is evaluated in UTC; under load a run can start several minutes late, so two consecutive runs may end up closer together or further apart than five minutes.
Common mistakes with */5 * * * *
5 * * * *is not every five minutes. Without the slash it means "at minute 5", which is once an hour: 00:05, 01:05, 02:05.- Putting the step in the hour field:
0 */5 * * *runs at minute 0 of hours 0, 5, 10, 15 and 20, five times a day. - Assuming every step divides the hour evenly.
*/7gives minutes 0, 7 ... 56 and then 0 again, a four-minute gap; five divides 60, so*/5has no uneven gap.
Frequently asked questions
*/5 * * * * - Every 5 minutes. Evaluated in UTC, that comes to 105,120 runs in 2026, the first at Thu, 1 Jan 2026, 00:00 UTC.
Give the step a starting point with a range: 2-59/5 * * * * runs at minutes 2, 7, 12 and so on up to 57. Offsetting like this spreads load when many jobs share a server, and on GitHub Actions it avoids the busy start of each hour.
EventBridge: cron(0/5 * * * ? *). Quartz: 0 0/5 * * * ?. EventBridge adds a year field at the end and Quartz a seconds field at the start, and both need ? in one day field - here the day-of-week field, because the schedule names no weekday.
Other common schedules
Reviewed by Raja Jahangir · Last reviewed: October 7, 2026