What is the cron expression for every 15 minutes?

The cron expression for every 15 minutes is "*/15 * * * *". Runs four times an hour, on the quarter hour.

What should I watch out for when running a cron job every 15 minutes?

Everyone else also aligned to :00/:15/:30/:45 — on shared hosts and SaaS APIs these four minutes are the busiest of the hour. Offsetting to 3,18,33,48 * * * * keeps the cadence and dodges the crowd. 15-minute cadence is often chosen by reflex when hourly would do. Ask who notices 45 minutes of staleness — if the answer is nobody, you’re paying 4× for nothing.

Cron expression for Every 15 minutes

*/15 * * * *

Runs four times an hour, on the quarter hour.

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 `/15 * * *`

Warming report caches so the 9am dashboard load is instant
Micro-batch ETL — small enough to re-run, frequent enough to feel fresh
Temporary tightened monitoring during an incident watch

Use `/15 * * *` 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

*/15 * * * * /path/to/your-command

Runs in the server’s local timezone — check it with timedatectl. Full field reference: crontab(5) man page.

GitHub Actions

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: "*/15 * * * *"

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: "*/15 * * * *"

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 */15 * * * *. 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 15 minutes schedules

Everyone else also aligned to :00/:15/:30/:45 — on shared hosts and SaaS APIs these four minutes are the busiest of the hour. Offsetting to 3,18,33,48 * * * * keeps the cadence and dodges the crowd.
15-minute cadence is often chosen by reflex when hourly would do. Ask who notices 45 minutes of staleness — if the answer is nobody, you’re paying 4× for nothing.

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 `/15 * * *` the right schedule?

Every 30 minutes halves the cost; hourly is enough when the consumer is a daily report. Go down to every 5 only with a real freshness SLA.

Or use the interactive cron generator & explainer, read the complete cron syntax guide, or pick another common schedule: