~/cron-builder

Cron: every 5 minutes

The cron expression `*/5 * * * *` fires at the top of every fifth minute. How it works, common use cases, and the gotchas when stacking five-minute jobs.

# expression

*/5 * * * *

Means: At every 5th minute past every hour — so 00, 05, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55.

→ Open in cron builder (pre-filled)

# common use cases

• Polling a queue for new jobs without long-running workers.
• Aggregating metrics into a coarse-grained time series.
• Health checks that hit an internal endpoint to detect drift.

# next fires (sample)

• 00:05
• 00:10
• 00:15
• 00:20
• 00:25

# pitfalls

• Five-minute jobs that take >5 minutes pile up. Always set a timeout shorter than the interval.
• If you run on every minute (`* * * * *`) and want every 5th, prefer `*/5 * * * *` — it produces strictly aligned timestamps for joins.

# other patterns

• Cron: every 15 minutes — */15 * * * *
• Cron: every hour — 0 * * * *
• Cron: daily at 3 AM — 0 3 * * *
• Cron: weekdays at 9 AM — 0 9 * * 1-5
• Cron: first of every month at midnight — 0 0 1 * *
• Cron: annually (Jan 1 at midnight) — 0 0 1 1 *

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