HTTPfy

Every 5 minutes

At minute 0, 5, 10, ... 55 of every hour, every day: 12 runs an hour.

*/5 * * * * Open in Crontab Generator
105,120runs in the next 365 days
2,016runs per week
5 minbetween every run
02:25next run, Wed 11 Nov UTC

What it is used for

The most common polling interval: health checks, queue drains, cache warmers, metrics scrapers and small sync jobs that must feel near-real-time without hammering an API.

Field by field

FieldValueMatches
Minute*/50, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55
Hour*every value
Day of month*every value
Month*every value
Day of week*every value
 
*/5 * * * * /path/to/job

Next 10 run times

Computed when this page loaded (2026-11-11 02:24 UTC), assuming the scheduler runs in UTC.

#UTCYour local time
1Wed 2026-11-11 02:25
2Wed 2026-11-11 02:30
3Wed 2026-11-11 02:35
4Wed 2026-11-11 02:40
5Wed 2026-11-11 02:45
6Wed 2026-11-11 02:50
7Wed 2026-11-11 02:55
8Wed 2026-11-11 03:00
9Wed 2026-11-11 03:05
10Wed 2026-11-11 03:10

Things to watch with this schedule

  • The runs are aligned to the clock (:00, :05, :10), not to when the crontab was saved. Every host running this line fires at the same second, so a fleet of servers hitting one API at :00, :05, ... can cause a thundering herd. Add a random sleep (for example sleep $((RANDOM % 60)) in bash) or use an offset list such as 2-59/5.
  • If one run can take longer than 5 minutes, two copies will overlap. Wrap the command in flock -n /tmp/job.lock so a new run exits when the previous one is still going.

Kubernetes CronJob

Kubernetes uses the same five fields. Set spec.timeZone (stable since Kubernetes 1.27), otherwise the schedule follows the time zone of kube-controller-manager.

apiVersion: batch/v1
kind: CronJob
metadata:
  name: every-5-minutes
spec:
  schedule: "*/5 * * * *"
  timeZone: "Etc/UTC"
  concurrencyPolicy: Forbid
  startingDeadlineSeconds: 300
  jobTemplate:
    spec:
      template:
        spec:
          restartPolicy: OnFailure
          containers:
            - name: job
              image: debian:bookworm-slim
              command: ["/bin/sh", "-c", "/app/run-job.sh"]

GitHub Actions

Workflow schedules use five-field cron in UTC and run only from the default branch. Runs at minute 0 are the most likely to be delayed or dropped when GitHub is busy; an odd minute such as 7 or 23 starts more reliably.

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: '*/5 * * * *'   # UTC

jobs:
  run:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - run: ./run-job.sh

systemd timer

The equivalent OnCalendar= value is *-*-* *:00/5:00. Check it with systemd-analyze calendar '*-*-* *:00/5:00', which prints the next elapse time. Persistent=true runs a missed job after downtime, which classic cron never does.

[Unit]
Description=Every 5 minutes

[Timer]
OnCalendar=*-*-* *:00/5:00
Persistent=true

[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target

AWS EventBridge

EventBridge rules take six fields (minute, hour, day-of-month, month, day-of-week, year) in UTC; EventBridge Scheduler can use a time zone. One of day-of-month and day-of-week must be ?, and day-of-week runs 1-7 from Sunday, so names are used here.

cron(0/5 * * * ? *)

Quartz Scheduler (Java)

Quartz adds a leading seconds field and needs ? in either day field; days of the week are 1 (SUN) to 7 (SAT).

0 0/5 * * * ?

Spring's @Scheduled(cron = ...) also uses six fields, but numbers days of the week 0-7 with Sunday as 0 or 7, like Unix cron; the names shown above work in both.

Related schedules