Run a cron job every minute
“At every minute.”
Five asterisks is the highest frequency standard cron supports: the job fires at the top of every minute, 1,440 times a day. It is the right choice for lightweight polling and queue draining — and a red flag for anything heavier, since a run that occasionally takes longer than 60 seconds will overlap with the next one.
* * * * *Next 5 runs
Computing from your local clock…
Field by field
| Field | Value | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Minute | * | every value |
| Hour | * | every value |
| Day of month | * | every value |
| Month | * | every value |
| Day of week | * | every value |
Typical uses
- Polling a queue or outbox table for new work
- Sending heartbeat / liveness pings to a monitor
- Development and testing — verifying a cron pipeline works at all
Worth knowing: Guard against overlap explicitly (flock in crontab, concurrencyPolicy: Forbid in Kubernetes). At this frequency, a slow run WILL eventually collide with the next start.
Related schedules
Need a different schedule? Build and test any cron expression with live explanation and next-run preview, or read the complete cron syntax guide.