Run a Cron Job Every 5 Minutes
Cron expression to run a job every 5 minutes. The */5 step value fires on minutes 0, 5, 10, 15, and so on.
Field-by-Field Breakdown
| Field | Value | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Minute | */5 | every 5 minutes |
| Hour | * | every hour |
| Day of Month | * | every day of month |
| Month | * | every month |
| Day of Week | * | every day of week |
*/5 * * * * is the most common minute-granularity schedule in production cron tables — frequent enough to feel close to real-time for users, infrequent enough that costs and overlap stay manageable. The step is a clean divisor of 60, so the runs always land on familiar wall-clock marks (:00, :05, :10, …), which makes correlating with logs and alerts easier.
When teams reach for this schedule
Synthetic monitoring and status-page updates
Status pages typically refresh every 5 minutes because that matches both human attention span and most monitoring SLAs. A `*/5` probe gives you 12 data points per hour — enough granularity to spot incidents without flooding storage.
Rate-limit-aware API polling
Most public APIs (Stripe, GitHub, Slack, Shopify) tolerate one poll every 5 minutes per token without burning quota. This cadence catches webhook drops or delivery-lag without pushing into the throttled tier.
Cache refresh for moderately-fresh data
Pricing tables, currency rates, exchange order books, and inventory snapshots are common `*/5` targets. The window is short enough that downstream consumers don't observe staleness, but long enough that aggregating writes still helps your write QPS.
What to watch for
- •All
*/5jobs across a fleet fire at the same clock-aligned moments (:00, :05, :10, …). If you run many of them, expect a thundering-herd spike at the top of each 5-minute window. Stagger with offsets (1-59/5,2-59/5) or jitter inside the job. - •After a server reboot, traditional crond resumes on the next aligned tick — so you can miss a window. Managed schedulers like TrigRun re-fire missed schedules on recovery; check whether your runtime does the same.
- •
*/5 * * * *and0,5,10,15,20,25,30,35,40,45,50,55 * * * *are equivalent. The step form is shorter and equally well-supported. - •If a single run takes longer than 5 minutes you'll start stacking. Either downshift the cadence or guard with concurrency=1.
Next 5 Scheduled Runs
Computed in UTC. Use the generator to compare UTC with your browser-local time.
- 1Wed, Jun 3, 2026, 07:15 PM
- 2Wed, Jun 3, 2026, 07:20 PM
- 3Wed, Jun 3, 2026, 07:25 PM
- 4Wed, Jun 3, 2026, 07:30 PM
- 5Wed, Jun 3, 2026, 07:35 PM
Schedule this with TrigRun
Deploy this cron schedule in seconds. Automatic retries, encrypted secrets, full execution history, and native MCP support for AI agents.
Start Scheduling — Free*/5 * * * *
Frequently Asked Questions
What does */5 mean in a cron expression?
The */5 in the minute field is a step value. It means 'every 5th minute', so the job runs at minutes 0, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, and 55 of every hour.
How many times does */5 * * * * run per day?
It runs 288 times per day — 12 times per hour across 24 hours.
Why does my */5 cron job sometimes skip a window?
Either the previous run is still going when the next tick fires (overlap protection skips), or the worker is down at the schedule moment and the runtime doesn't replay missed schedules. TrigRun supports backfill and replay so missed windows are recoverable.