Every N minutes
*/3 * * * *Run every 3 minutes — :00, :03, :06, … :57.
This preview is live: the table below shows the actual next run times for */3 * * * * in your time zone, recomputed in your browser. Change the expression, dialect, or zone to experiment, then copy the result.
*/3 * * * * means*/3 * * * * fires twenty times an hour, on every minute divisible by three. Because 60 divides evenly by 3, the cadence is perfectly regular — the last fire of the hour is at :57 and the next is :00 of the following hour, still exactly three minutes apart.
Three minutes is a popular interval for jobs that are slightly too heavy for every-minute but need to stay snappy: short ETL micro-batches, lightweight scrapers, or retry sweeps. It keeps the run count low enough (1,200/day) that overlap is rare while still reacting quickly to new work.
Unix cron has five fields. Here is what each one is doing in this expression:
| Field | Value | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Minute | */3 | every 3 (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 | */3 * * * * | |
| GitHub Actions | */3 * * * * | |
| Kubernetes CronJob | */3 * * * * | |
| Vercel Cron | */3 * * * * | |
| Quartz | 0 */3 * * * * * | |
| Spring | 0 */3 * * * * | |
| AWS EventBridge | */3 * * * * * |
*/3 * * * *Not every step divides the hour cleanly. */3 does (60 ÷ 3 = 20), but something like */7 resets at :00 every hour, so the gap between :56 and :00 is only four minutes — the regularity you assume from the slash is not guaranteed.
*/3 * * * * means: Run every 3 minutes — :00, :03, :06, … :57. */3 * * * * fires twenty times an hour, on every minute divisible by three. Because 60 divides evenly by 3, the cadence is perfectly regular — the last fire of the hour is at :57 and the next is :00 of the following hour, still exactly three minutes apart.
Use */3 * * * * in the schedule's cron field. Not every step divides the hour cleanly. */3 does (60 ÷ 3 = 20), but something like */7 resets at :00 every hour, so the gap between :56 and :00 is only four minutes — the regularity you assume from the slash is not guaranteed.
EventBridge uses six fields with a required year and a ? placeholder in one day field: */3 * * * * *. Wrap it as cron(*/3 * * * * *) in the console or CloudFormation.
Quartz is seconds-first with a trailing year, so the equivalent is 0 */3 * * * * *. 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.