Every Minute Cron Expression for Airflow
* * * * *Try it live
Valid
MINMinute
0HRHour
9DOMDay of Month
*MONMonth
*DOWDay of Week
1-5In plain English
At 09:00 AM, Monday through Friday
English → Cron
Try: "every 5 minutes", "every weekday at 9am", "every Monday at 3pm", "every month on the 1st"
Next 10 Executions
UTC- 1Mon, May 18, 09:00 AM UTCin 3d
- 2Tue, May 19, 09:00 AM UTCin 4d
- 3Wed, May 20, 09:00 AM UTCin 5d
- 4Thu, May 21, 09:00 AM UTCin 6d
- 5Fri, May 22, 09:00 AM UTCin 7d
- 6Mon, May 25, 09:00 AM UTCin 10d
- 7Tue, May 26, 09:00 AM UTCin 11d
- 8Wed, May 27, 09:00 AM UTCin 12d
- 9Thu, May 28, 09:00 AM UTCin 13d
- 10Fri, May 29, 09:00 AM UTCin 14d
crontab entrybash
# Add to crontab with: crontab -e
0 9 * * 1-5 /path/to/your/script.shWhen to use this schedule
- ▸ API health checks and uptime monitoring with a 1-minute polling loop
- ▸ Real-time dashboards that aggregate metrics from multiple sources every minute
- ▸ Rate-limited job queues that process one batch per minute to avoid throttling
- ▸ Heartbeat signals for distributed systems to detect node failures quickly
- ▸ Minute-level log rotation or buffer flushing for high-throughput pipelines
Platform Syntax Comparison
The same "Every Minute" schedule expressed in every major platform's cron syntax.
| Platform | Expression |
|---|---|
| Standard Linux/Unix | * * * * * |
| GitHub Actions | * * * * * |
| Google Cloud Scheduler | * * * * * |
| Kubernetes CronJob | * * * * * |
| Azure Functions (NCRONTAB) | 0 * * * * * |
| AWS EventBridge | * * * * ? * |
| Quartz Scheduler | 0 * * * * ? |
| Spring @Scheduled | 0 * * * * * |
| Jenkins | * * * * * |
| Apache Airflow | * * * * * |
Frequently Asked Questions
Does "every minute" mean exactly at :00, :30, etc.? ▾
No — cron triggers at the start of each minute (when the clock ticks over). "* * * * *" fires at :00 of every minute, not at random offsets.
What's the maximum frequency for standard cron? ▾
One execution per minute is the finest granularity in standard 5-field cron. For sub-minute scheduling, use Quartz (adds a seconds field) or a task scheduler like Celery or Sidekiq.
Will every-minute cron overload my database? ▾
It depends on the job. A lightweight ping is fine at 1-minute intervals; a full report generation could cause contention. Add a timeout and idempotency guard to prevent overlapping runs.
Is * * * * * the same as @minutely? ▾
There is no @minutely alias in standard cron. "* * * * *" is the only way to express every-minute execution in 5-field syntax.
How do I limit every-minute jobs to business hours? ▾
Use "* 9-17 * * 1-5" to run every minute from 9am–5pm on weekdays. The hour field restricts the time window.