Cron expression for Every 10 minutes
*/10 * * * *
Runs every ten minutes, around the clock.
Next 5 runs (your local time)
These are shown in your browser’s timezone. The job itself runs in the scheduler’s timezone — often UTC — so the real run time can differ.
What people actually schedule with */10 * * * *
- Shipping logs to storage in batches small enough to retry cheaply
- Syncing new orders from a marketplace or payment provider
- Sampling disk usage / queue depth for capacity graphs
Use */10 * * * * on your platform
It’s the same 5-field expression everywhere — what changes is where you put it and which timezone it runs in.
Linux / crontab
*/10 * * * * /path/to/your-commandRuns in the server’s local timezone — check it with timedatectl.
Full field reference: crontab(5) man page.
GitHub Actions
on:
schedule:
- cron: "*/10 * * * *"GitHub Actions always runs scheduled jobs in UTC — there is no timezone setting, and runs can be delayed under load (official docs).
Kubernetes CronJob
spec:
schedule: "*/10 * * * *"Defaults to UTC. Set spec.timeZone (Kubernetes 1.27+)
for a specific zone — see the
CronJob docs.
Quartz / Spring @Scheduled
Quartz uses 6 fields (seconds first): 0 */10 * * * *. Watch out:
Quartz day-of-week is 1=SUN … 7=SAT (not 0–6), and day-of-month /
day-of-week use ? — double-check if your schedule touches those fields
(Quartz cron reference).
Gotchas with every 10 minutes schedules
- 144 runs a day adds up against API quotas — a free tier of 1,000 calls/day is gone by breakfast if each run makes 8 calls.
- If the job sometimes takes 11 minutes, you either overlap (no lock) or silently skip a slot (
flock -n). Decide which failure you prefer and make it explicit. */10divides the hour evenly only because 60 is divisible by 10 —*/7or*/25produce lopsided gaps at the hour boundary. Stick to divisors of 60.
Will you know if this job silently fails?
Cron jobs fail quietly — a server reboots, a path changes, or an error code is ignored — and nobody notices until the data is missing. A cron monitor (a dead-man’s-switch) alerts you when a scheduled job does not check in on time.
Monitor your cron jobs with UptimeRobot →
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Is */10 * * * * the right schedule?
Every 15 minutes aligns to quarter-hours, which reads better on human-facing dashboards. Every 5 minutes doubles your API spend — pay it only if someone actually waits on the data.
Or use the interactive cron generator & explainer, read the complete cron syntax guide, or pick another common schedule: