Cron every 5 minutes

*/5 * * * * runs a job every five minutes, around the clock. The five fields are minute, hour, day of month, month and day of week, and only the first one is set: */5 means “every minute from 0 to 59 whose number divides by 5”.

When it fires

On the clock, not five minutes after you saved it. The runs land at :00, :05, :10 … :55 of every hour. Checked at 09:58 UTC, the next five runs are:

10:00  10:05  10:10  10:15  10:20

So the first run can come anywhere from a few seconds to five minutes after the job is installed. If you need a different offset, give the step a start: 2-59/5 * * * * runs at :02, :07, :12 and so on.

Variations

*/5 9-17 * * 1-5     every 5 minutes, 09:00 to 17:55, Monday to Friday
*/5 * * * 0,6        every 5 minutes on weekends
0,30 * * * *         every 30 minutes, for comparison

The same schedule elsewhere

• crontab: */5 * * * * /usr/local/bin/backup.sh. Times follow the server’s timezone unless the crontab sets CRON_TZ.
• GitHub Actions: cron: '*/5 * * * *' under on.schedule. Five minutes is the shortest interval GitHub allows, times are UTC, and runs can start late when Actions is busy.
• Kubernetes CronJob: schedule: "*/5 * * * *"; set spec.timeZone to pin the zone.
• AWS EventBridge: cron(0/5 * * * ? *). AWS uses six fields, adds a year at the end, and needs ? in either day field.
• systemd timer: OnCalendar=*:0/5.
• Spring @Scheduled: 0 */5 * * * *, because Spring’s cron starts with a seconds field.