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Cron: Every Minute

A cron expression of * * * * * fires once every minute, all day, every day — the wildcard * in each of the five fields means "any value." It's the highest-frequency schedule standard cron supports (without a seconds field), and it's mostly used for polling, health checks, or queue workers that need near-real-time responsiveness.

* * * * *

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Examples & Variations

* * * * *

Every single minute

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*/2 * * * *

Every 2 minutes instead

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* 9-17 * * 1-5

Every minute, but only business hours

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Common Mistakes

  • Running heavy jobs every minute without a lock — if one run takes longer than a minute, the next invocation can overlap it and cause race conditions.
  • Forgetting that most CI/CD schedulers (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI) impose a minimum interval — GitHub Actions rounds sub-5-minute schedules up and can delay them further under load.
  • Using * * * * * in production for anything expensive; it's almost always cheaper to use a proper queue or a longer interval like */5.

Best Practices

  • Add a mutex or lock file so overlapping runs skip instead of stacking up.
  • Log start/end timestamps so you can detect a job that's silently taking longer than its interval.
  • If you only need per-minute precision during certain hours, restrict the hour field (e.g. * 9-17 * * *) to cut load outside that window.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is running a cron job every minute bad practice?
Not inherently — it's standard for health checks and lightweight polling. It becomes a problem when the job itself is slow or resource-intensive, since minute-level cron has almost no room for a run to take longer than 60 seconds without overlapping the next one.
Can cron run more often than every minute?
Standard 5-field cron cannot go below one-minute resolution. Some schedulers (Quartz, systemd timers) support a 6-field format with a leading seconds field for sub-minute precision.
Does every-minute cron work the same in Kubernetes CronJobs?
Yes — Kubernetes CronJobs use standard 5-field cron syntax, so * * * * * is valid, though Kubernetes itself has scheduling latency and isn't guaranteed to fire at the exact second.

Related Tools

Cron Parser

Translate cron expressions to plain English

Cron Cheat Sheet

Quick reference for cron syntax, special characters, and shortcuts

Cron Examples Library

Browse and search common cron expression examples

Cron: First Monday (Nth Weekday) of the Month

Standard cron can't natively express 'first Monday of the month' — see why the common day-range trick is actually wrong, and the correct workaround.

Cron: Every 2 Minutes

Run a cron job every 2 minutes with */2 * * * *. Learn how the step syntax works, common pitfalls, and when to use it instead of every-minute.

Cron: Every 5 Minutes

The cron expression for every 5 minutes is */5 * * * *. See real-world examples, common mistakes, and scheduling best practices.