Cron Every 5 Minutes

Understanding the Expression

Field	Value	Meaning
Minute	*/5	Every 5th minute
Hour	*	Every hour
Day of month	*	Every day
Month	*	Every month
Day of week	*	Every day of the week

Example Usage

Basic crontab entry

*/5 * * * * /path/to/your/script.sh

With logging

*/5 * * * * /path/to/script.sh >> /var/log/script.log 2>&1

With monitoring

*/5 * * * * /path/to/script.sh && curl -fsS https://api.cronsignal.io/ping/YOUR_CHECK_ID

Common Use Cases

• Health checks: Ping external services or run connectivity tests
• Queue processing: Process pending jobs from a queue
• Cache updates: Refresh frequently-changing data
• Metrics collection: Gather system stats for monitoring
• Sync jobs: Keep data synchronized between systems

Variations

Every 5 minutes during business hours

*/5 9-17 * * 1-5

Runs every 5 minutes from 9 AM to 5 PM, Monday through Friday.

Every 5 minutes, offset by 2

2-57/5 * * * *

Runs at minutes 2, 7, 12, 17, 22, etc. Useful to avoid the "thundering herd" at minute 0.

Monitoring Tips

Jobs that run every 5 minutes are high-frequency and critical to catch early if they fail. Set your monitoring with:

• Schedule: Every 5 minutes
• Grace period: 2-3 minutes

This way you'll know within minutes if something breaks, not hours later.

Platform Equivalents

The same schedule expressed across common platforms and schedulers:

Timezone Considerations

Every-5-minute jobs run regardless of timezone, but verify your server clock is synced with NTP — a drifting clock means your intervals drift too.

Common Mistakes

• */5 vs 0/5: Both work in standard cron, but AWS EventBridge requires 0/5 syntax in its 6-field format.
• High-frequency alert fatigue: Set a grace period of 2–3 minutes in your monitoring, not 0 — otherwise a 10-second delay triggers a false alarm.
• Thundering herd: If multiple servers run */5 * * * *, they all fire simultaneously. Stagger with 1-56/5, 2-57/5, etc.