Crontab Guru
Replaceable in one session with an AI coding agent.
A cron expression editor that says in plain English when a schedule will fire, with a preview of the next runs — free on the web, with monitoring attached on the paid tier.
Build me a cron expression editor: type a schedule, read it back in English, and see the next runs. This is small, and it is the kind of small that goes wrong quietly, so the whole prompt is about correctness. STACK - Node 20+, or nothing at all — this works entirely in a browser as one static page - A real time zone library and the IANA database. Never an offset - No framework, no build step PARSING, WHICH IS THE WHOLE JOB - Five fields: minute, hour, day of month, month, day of week. Support the extras people actually use: `*/5`, ranges, lists, `L`, `#`, and three-letter month and day names - **Day-of-month and day-of-week together are OR, not AND.** `0 0 13 * 5` fires on the 13th *and* on every Friday, not on Friday the 13th. That single rule is the most misunderstood thing in cron, and getting it wrong makes the tool worse than useless - Both fields unrestricted (`*`) means every day. One restricted and the other `*` means only the restricted one applies. Both restricted means either matches - Support the named shorthands — `@daily`, `@weekly`, `@reboot` — and say plainly that `@reboot` has no next run to show - Reject rather than guess: `0 0 31 2 *` never fires, and the tool should say so rather than silently showing nothing SAYING IT IN ENGLISH - Build the sentence from the parsed fields, not from string matching on the input - Read it aloud before shipping each shape: 'every 5 minutes', 'at 09:30 on weekdays', 'at midnight on the 1st of every month' - When the expression is complicated enough that no sentence is clear, say the parts separately rather than producing a sentence nobody can follow THE NEXT RUNS, WHERE THE REAL BUGS ARE - Show the next several occurrences as actual dates and times, in a zone the reader picks - **Daylight saving is the part that bites.** In the spring transition, 02:30 does not exist on one day of the year — a job scheduled then either skips or runs at a different hour, and which one depends on the cron implementation. In the autumn transition it happens twice - Say what your calculation assumes, out loud, on the page. Different cron daemons genuinely behave differently here and a tool that pretends there is one answer is lying - Compute against the chosen zone with a real library, never by adding hours to a UTC instant - A test suite with both transitions, a leap year, the 29th of February, and the day-of-week OR case. Those five cover almost every real bug in this category THE PAGE - One input, the sentence beneath it, the next runs beneath that, updating as you type - A list of common examples to click, which is how most people actually use it - The URL carries the expression, so a schedule can be shared or linked from a review comment - Works with no network after the first load, because it is a parser and a calendar AND THE HALF THAT IS ACTUALLY WORTH PAYING FOR The editor is free everywhere; the subscription is the monitoring dashboard beside it — knowing that the job did not run. That is a different product and it is under Healthchecks and Cronitor elsewhere in this catalogue. WHAT MATTERS MOST The day-of-month OR day-of-week rule, and the daylight-saving cases. Write those tests first; everything else here is a form.
What you lose
- A page everybody already knows the address of
- Edge cases in the expression grammar that took years of reports to find
- The monitoring dashboard the paid tier is actually for
- Nothing to run, which is why it gets used
If you would rather not build
- A static page, which is all this needs to be
- The monitoring half, which is the part actually worth money
The escape hatch
open source · no votes, no paid placement
cronstrue
$0Turns a cron expression into a readable sentence, in many languages.
bradymholt/cRonstruefree · open source
cron-parser
$0Parses expressions and iterates the next occurrences with time zone support.
harrisiirak/cron-parserfree · open source
Why this verdict
our own opinion · changed only by a person
92/100
Verdict yes at 92: one of the highest scores in the catalogue. It is a parser and a calendar, it runs in a browser with no server, and the entry names the two rules that make a homemade one wrong.
History
tracked since 14 Aug 2026 · nothing is ever overwritten
Nothing recorded yet. This chart fills in once the page has visitors, votes or prompt copies — it will not draw a flat line to look busy.
Questions about Crontab Guru
answered from the record above
Is Crontab Guru free?
No — the plan we track is $12 a month. The expression editor is free; the paid tier bundles the monitoring dashboard from around $12/month.
Can you replace Crontab Guru by building your own?
YES. Replaceable in one session with an AI coding agent. Replacement score 92 out of 100, build time one session. Read what you lose before you decide.
How much does Crontab Guru cost?
$12 a month on Pro — $144 a year. Recorded 14 Aug 2026.
What do you lose by replacing Crontab Guru?
A page everybody already knows the address of; Edge cases in the expression grammar that took years of reports to find; The monitoring dashboard the paid tier is actually for; Nothing to run, which is why it gets used. If any of those carry weight for you, keep paying.
Is there an open-source alternative to Crontab Guru?
Yes: cronstrue, cron-parser. The prompt on this page is for when you want it your way instead.
Related entries
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