Cron schedule reference

Cron every 3 minutes

Every 3 minutes.

*/3 * * * *

minute · hour · day of month · month · day of week

What this expression selects

Every 3 minutes. This is a five-field calendar schedule, interpreted in the timezone you configure. It is not an instruction to wait a fixed duration after the last completion.

Common mistakes

The minute field */3 resets at every hour boundary. Cron steps are clock-field selections, not a timer measured from process startup.

Next five runs in UTC

Computed at build time from 19 Oct 2026, 00:00 UTC. These are examples, not a live clock.

2026-10-19T00:03:00.000Z
2026-10-19T00:06:00.000Z
2026-10-19T00:09:00.000Z
2026-10-19T00:12:00.000Z
2026-10-19T00:15:00.000Z

A nearby variation

*/20 * * * *

Every 20 minutes. Compare it with the expression above before copying; the selected fields change the calendar times.

Preview live runs in your timezone ↗

Monitor the completed work

Copy a private ping URL from a CronPulse check. Set its schedule to */3 * * * * in the same timezone as your job runner, and add grace for runtime and scheduling delay. Send success after the work finishes, not when it is enqueued.

Add success and exit-code reporting to crontab. Missing pings are evaluated once a minute; this is not sub-minute monitoring.

Questions

Which time zone does this use?

The examples use UTC. Choose your IANA time zone in the cron helper; your host scheduler must use the same zone.

Does cron wait for the last job to finish?

This expression chooses clock times. It does not provide locking or an elapsed timer. Configure concurrency in the job runner.

Related schedules

Cron every 20 minutes

Cron every day at 3am

One URL. A little more peace of mind.

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