Run a job every 5 minutes

The cron expression for every 5 minutes is */5 * * * *. The */5step in the minute field fires at :00, :05, :10, and so on through :55 — 12 times an hour, every hour, every day.

By platform

Most schedulers accept the same 5-field expression, but a few differ in field count, timezone or minimum interval.

• Crontab (Linux/macOS)*/5 * * * *
  Runs in the system's local timezone.
• GitHub Actions*/5 * * * *
  The fastest schedule GitHub allows; runs in UTC unless you add a timezone field.
• Kubernetes CronJob*/5 * * * *
  Same 5-field syntax; uses the cluster control plane's timezone.
• AWS EventBridgecron(0/5 * * * ? *)
  6 fields; day-of-month must be ? when day-of-week is *.
• Vercel Cron Jobs*/5 * * * *
  Requires the Pro plan; Hobby is capped at once a day.

GitHub Actions notes

Every 5 minutes is the shortest interval GitHub Actions allows for a scheduled workflow. In a public repository, GitHub disables a scheduled workflow automatically after 60 days with no repository activity, so a low-traffic repo can silently stop running.

AWS EventBridge notes

EventBridge cron expressions have six fields and can't set both day-of-month and day-of-week to a value at once — one of them must be ?. For a plain every-5-minutes schedule, a rate expression is simpler: rate(5 minutes).

Vercel notes

On the Hobby plan, */5 * * * *fails at deploy time because Hobby cron jobs are limited to once a day. Running every 5 minutes needs the Pro plan, which also gives per-minute scheduling precision instead of Hobby's ±59 minute window.

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