Every N minutes
*/15 * * * *
Run four times an hour, :00, :15, :30, :45.
This preview is live: the table below shows the actual next run times for */15 * * * * in your time zone, recomputed in your browser. Change the expression, dialect, or zone to experiment, then copy the result.
What */15 * * * * means
*/15 * * * * lands on the quarter-hours, the same rhythm clocks and calendars use, which makes it easy to reason about and easy for humans to predict. It fires 96 times a day and is the most popular cadence for jobs that feed near-real-time dashboards.
Quarter-hour scheduling pairs naturally with billing, metering, and SLA windows that are themselves measured in 15-minute blocks. Because the marks align with the wall clock, logs from a */15 job are trivial to eyeball, every timestamp ends in :00, :15, :30, or :45.
Field-by-field breakdown
Unix cron has five fields. Here is what each one is doing in this expression:
| Field | Value | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Minute | */15 | every 15 (step) across minute |
| Hour | * | every hour |
| Day of month | * | every day-of-month |
| Month | * | every month |
| Day of week | * | every day-of-week |
Every 15 minutes in every scheduler
The same cadence written for the seven cron dialects you are most likely to meet. Copy the line for the system you target, the field count and day-of-week numbering differ between them.
| Scheduler | Expression | Copy |
|---|---|---|
| Unix / crontab | */15 * * * * | |
| GitHub Actions | */15 * * * * | |
| Kubernetes CronJob | */15 * * * * | |
| Vercel Cron | */15 * * * * | |
| Quartz | 0 */15 * * * * * | |
| Spring | 0 */15 * * * * | |
| AWS EventBridge | */15 * * * * * |
When you would use */15 * * * *
- Feeding 15-minute interval metrics or energy-usage readings.
- Refreshing materialized views and reporting tables.
- Polling payment processors for settlement updates.
The gotcha worth knowing
Writing 0,15,30,45 * * * * is identical to */15 but harder to read and easy to typo. Prefer the step form unless you genuinely need irregular minutes.
People also search for
*/15 * * * * FAQ
What does the cron expression */15 * * * * mean?
*/15 * * * * means: Run four times an hour, :00, :15, :30, :45. */15 * * * * lands on the quarter-hours, the same rhythm clocks and calendars use, which makes it easy to reason about and easy for humans to predict. It fires 96 times a day and is the most popular cadence for jobs that feed near-real-time dashboards.
How do I write "every 15 minutes" in GitHub Actions?
Use */15 * * * * in the schedule's cron field. Writing 0,15,30,45 * * * * is identical to */15 but harder to read and easy to typo. Prefer the step form unless you genuinely need irregular minutes.
How do I write "every 15 minutes" for AWS EventBridge?
EventBridge uses six fields with a required year and a ? placeholder in one day field: */15 * * * * *. Wrap it as cron(*/15 * * * * *) in the console or CloudFormation.
What is the Quartz equivalent of */15 * * * *?
Quartz is seconds-first with a trailing year, so the equivalent is 0 */15 * * * * *. Remember Quartz numbers Sunday as 1, the opposite of Unix.
Related cron patterns
More cron tools
Browse the full set of cron pattern pages, or jump to the interactive tools: the cron expression builder for designing a schedule from scratch, the cron cheat sheet for a side-by-side reference, the cron timezone translator for moving a schedule between zones and dialects, and the GitHub Actions cron picker for DST-stable CI schedules.