Every N minutes
*/2 * * * *Run on even minutes — :00, :02, :04, … :58.
This preview is live: the table below shows the actual next run times for */2 * * * * in your time zone, recomputed in your browser. Change the expression, dialect, or zone to experiment, then copy the result.
*/2 * * * * means*/2 * * * * uses a step value: */2 in the minute field means "start at minute 0 and fire every 2 minutes thereafter", landing on every even minute of every hour. It is a common middle ground for pollers that need to feel responsive without the load of an every-minute job.
Steps are anchored to the start of the range, not to when you deploy. */2 always fires on even minutes regardless of when the crontab was installed — so two jobs both set to */2 will collide on the same even minutes unless you offset one of them with an explicit start like 1-59/2.
Unix cron has five fields. Here is what each one is doing in this expression:
| Field | Value | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Minute | */2 | every 2 (step) across minute |
| Hour | * | every hour |
| Day of month | * | every day-of-month |
| Month | * | every month |
| Day of week | * | every day-of-week |
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 | */2 * * * * | |
| GitHub Actions | */2 * * * * | |
| Kubernetes CronJob | */2 * * * * | |
| Vercel Cron | */2 * * * * | |
| Quartz | 0 */2 * * * * * | |
| Spring | 0 */2 * * * * | |
| AWS EventBridge | */2 * * * * * |
*/2 * * * **/2 is not "every 2 minutes from now" — it is anchored to :00. If you need to stagger two such jobs, use 1-59/2 for the second one so they land on odd minutes.
*/2 * * * * means: Run on even minutes — :00, :02, :04, … :58. */2 * * * * uses a step value: */2 in the minute field means "start at minute 0 and fire every 2 minutes thereafter", landing on every even minute of every hour. It is a common middle ground for pollers that need to feel responsive without the load of an every-minute job.
Use */2 * * * * in the schedule's cron field. */2 is not "every 2 minutes from now" — it is anchored to :00. If you need to stagger two such jobs, use 1-59/2 for the second one so they land on odd minutes.
EventBridge uses six fields with a required year and a ? placeholder in one day field: */2 * * * * *. Wrap it as cron(*/2 * * * * *) in the console or CloudFormation.
Quartz is seconds-first with a trailing year, so the equivalent is 0 */2 * * * * *. Remember Quartz numbers Sunday as 1, the opposite of Unix.
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.