Cron every minute

The cron expression for every minute is:

* * * * *

Runs once a minute, every minute of every day.

1,440 times a day

Standard 5-field cron

Monitor this schedule Open in translator Change it in the generator

Next 10 runs

For * * * * *, in the timezone you pick. Cron uses the server's timezone.

Times in UTC as of the last site update. They refresh when the page loads in a browser.

Timezone

#	Date and time	When
1	Oct 29, 2026, 22:12	Thursday
2	Oct 29, 2026, 22:13	Thursday
3	Oct 29, 2026, 22:14	Thursday
4	Oct 29, 2026, 22:15	Thursday
5	Oct 29, 2026, 22:16	Thursday
6	Oct 29, 2026, 22:17	Thursday
7	Oct 29, 2026, 22:18	Thursday
8	Oct 29, 2026, 22:19	Thursday
9	Oct 29, 2026, 22:20	Thursday
10	Oct 29, 2026, 22:21	Thursday

How to read * * * * *

All five fields are *, which means any value. Cron checks its schedule once a minute, so this is the most often a standard cron job can run.

Field	Value	Meaning	Allowed
Minute	*	Every minute	0-59
Hour	*	Every hour	0-23
Day of month	*	Every day of the month	1-31
Month	*	Every month	1-12 or jan-dec
Weekday	*	Every day of week	0-7 or sun-sat

Watch out for

If a run takes longer than a minute, the next one starts anyway and the two overlap. Wrap the command in flock -n /tmp/job.lock to skip a run while the previous one is still going.
Standard cron has no seconds field. For a sub-minute schedule, loop inside the job or use a scheduler with a seconds field, such as Quartz.
GitHub Actions does not run schedules more often than every 5 minutes.

Often used for: Queue pollers, short sync loops and checks that need to react within a minute.

Use it in

crontab

* * * * * /path/to/your-script.sh

Edit with crontab -e. Runs in the server's timezone.

Kubernetes CronJob

apiVersion: batch/v1
kind: CronJob
metadata:
  name: my-job
spec:
  schedule: "* * * * *"
  timeZone: "Etc/UTC"
  jobTemplate:
    spec:
      template:
        spec:
          restartPolicy: OnFailure
          containers:
            - name: my-job
              image: busybox:1.36
              command: ["sh", "-c", "date"]

Without timeZone, the schedule follows the timezone of the kube-controller-manager.

GitHub Actions

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: '* * * * *'
      timezone: "Etc/UTC"
jobs:
  run:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - run: ./your-script.sh

Without timezone, GitHub runs schedules in UTC. It runs them at most every 5 minutes, and a run can start late when GitHub is busy.

All cron schedules

Cron does not tell you when a job stops

Know when a job on this schedule does not run.

Your job pings Drumbeats when it finishes. If a ping does not arrive on schedule, you get an alert. No SDK, free for up to 50 monitors.

Monitor this schedule Set up with AI agent

Free for up to 50 monitors · Setup in 60 seconds · No credit card required