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Cron Expression Generator
العربية

Airflow cron format

Airflow Cron Expression Generator

Build and check the cron string you pass to schedule in an Apache Airflow DAG. Airflow parses five-field cron with the croniter library, adds presets such as @quarterly, @once and @continuous, and accepts croniter extras like L and MON#1. The generator explains each schedule and lists the next trigger times as you type.

Cron expression translator and generator

Format
Valid

5 fields, as in crontab. Presets @daily, @quarterly, @once and @continuous work, and so do croniter's L, 15W, MON#1 and L5.

English

At 6:00 AM, Monday through Friday.

العربية

في تمام الساعة 6:00 ص، من الإثنين إلى الجمعة.

    Quick presets

    Visual cron generator

    Pick options for each field — the expression above updates instantly.

    Next 5 executions

    Local time:

      Cheat sheet

      *
      Any value
      ,
      List — 1,15,30
      -
      Range — 1-5
      /
      Step — */10
      ?
      No specific value (day fields)
      @daily
      Macro for 0 0 * * *
      L
      Last day of the month, or last weekday — L5
      W
      Nearest Monday–Friday — 15W
      #
      Nth weekday — 6#3
      22-2
      Range that wraps past the end — 10 PM to 2 AM

      Airflow cron format

      The schedule argument takes a five-field cron string, laid out like a crontab line:

      FieldAllowed valuesSpecial characters
      Minute0–59, - * /
      Hour0–23, - * /
      Day of month1–31, - * ? / L W
      Month1–12 or JAN–DEC, - * /
      Day of week0–7 or SUN–SAT (0 and 7 = Sunday), - * ? / L #

      Special characters

      SymbolMeaning
      @Presets: @hourly, @daily, @weekly, @monthly, @quarterly (0 0 1 */3 *) and @yearly. @once runs the DAG a single time, @continuous starts a new run as soon as the last one ends, and schedule=None leaves the DAG to manual or API triggers.
      LThe last day of the month in day-of-month: 0 0 L * *. In day-of-week croniter puts L first, so L5 is the last Friday of the month; the Quartz form 5L is rejected.
      #The nth weekday of the month: MON#1 is the first Monday and 5#3 the third Friday.
      WThe weekday nearest to a date: 15W. It takes a single day, not a list or a range.
      ?Same as *, allowed on its own in either day field.
      /Steps: */30 in the minute field runs at minutes 0 and 30, and 0 */4 * * * every four hours from midnight.

      Airflow cron examples

      Click an expression to load it into the generator above.

      ExpressionSchedule
      At 12:00 AM.
      At 6:00 AM.
      At 6:00 AM, Monday through Friday.
      Every 30 minutes.
      At 0 minutes past the hour, every 4 hours.
      At 12:00 AM, on day 1 of the month, only in January, April, July, and October.
      At 12:00 AM, on the last day of the month.
      At 9:00 AM, on the first Monday of the month.
      At 6:00 PM, on the last Friday of the month.
      At 9:00 AM, on day 1 of the month or on Monday.
      Once only: Airflow creates a single run and never schedules the DAG again.
      Continuously: a new run starts as soon as the previous one finishes.

      When does an Airflow cron schedule run?

      Use it in a DAG

      Pass the expression to schedule. The time zone of start_date decides when it fires:

      import pendulum
from airflow.sdk import dag, task


@dag(
    schedule="0 6 * * 1-5",
    start_date=pendulum.datetime(2026, 1, 1, tz="Asia/Riyadh"),
    catchup=False,
)
def weekday_report():
    @task
    def build_report():
        ...

    build_report()


weekday_report()

      To fix when runs start, whatever the Airflow version or settings, pass a timetable instead of a string:

      from airflow.sdk import CronDataIntervalTimetable, CronTriggerTimetable

# Starts at 06:00; the logical date is 06:00 (Airflow 3 default)
schedule=CronTriggerTimetable("0 6 * * 1-5", timezone="Asia/Riyadh")

# Each run covers the interval that just ended (Airflow 2 default)
schedule=CronDataIntervalTimetable("0 6 * * 1-5", timezone="Asia/Riyadh")

      On Airflow 2, import dag and task from airflow.decorators, and the timetables from airflow.timetables.trigger and airflow.timetables.interval. schedule_interval, deprecated since Airflow 2.4, is gone in Airflow 3: use schedule.

      Frequently asked questions

      Why didn’t my Airflow DAG run at the scheduled time?

      With a data-interval timetable (the Airflow 2 default), a run starts when its interval ends: the @daily run for 1 March starts at midnight on 2 March. Also check that start_date is in the past, that the DAG is unpaused, and which time zone start_date uses.

      What is the difference between @once, @continuous and None?

      @once creates a single run and never schedules the DAG again. @continuous starts a new run as soon as the previous one finishes, and needs max_active_runs=1. schedule=None creates no runs at all, so the DAG runs only when you trigger it by hand or through the API.

      Does Airflow support L, W and # in cron expressions?

      Yes, because Airflow parses cron with croniter: 0 0 L * * is the last day of the month, 0 9 * * MON#1 the first Monday and 0 18 * * L5 the last Friday. Quartz forms such as 5L, LW and L-2 are rejected.

      Which time zone does an Airflow cron schedule use?

      The time zone of the DAG’s start_date. With pendulum.datetime(2026, 1, 1, tz="Asia/Riyadh"), 0 6 * * * runs at 06:00 Riyadh time. A naive start_date uses [core] default_timezone, which is UTC by default.

      Cron generators for other platforms

      Unix / Linux cron generator */15 8-18 * * 1-5 Quartz Cron Expression Generator 0 0 8 ? * MON-FRI Spring Cron Expression Generator 0 0 8 * * MON-FRI AWS Cron Expression Generator 0 8 ? * MON-FRI * Jenkins Cron Expression Generator H 2 * * 1-5 Salesforce Cron Expression Generator 0 0 8 ? * MON-FRI Hangfire Cron Expression Generator 0 8 * * 1-5 node-cron Expression Generator 0 30 8 * * 1-5

      Browse all cron expression examples →