*/10 * * * * *
Cron reads this as: every 10th second, every minute.
This is a Quartz-style expression with seconds in the leading field. Standard Unix cron takes five fields and has a one-minute floor, so it cannot run this line: it would read the sixth field as the start of the command. Quartz itself also wants a ? in one of the day fields, as in */10 * * * * ?. See Quartz vs Unix cron for the differences.
Next 5 runs
These times are in your browser's local time zone. Cron itself uses the server's zone, which on most cloud hosts is UTC. If the difference matters here, see time zones & DST.
- Calculating…
When to use this schedule
It runs six times a minute. Like the other sub-minute schedules, this is a Quartz-style expression with seconds in the leading field. JVM applications use it for tight polling loops, health probes and draining queues in near real time.
What to watch out for
At almost nine thousand invocations a day, fixed per-run overhead such as connection setup, framework initialisation and log volume becomes the largest cost. At this frequency, consider whether polling is the right model: a subscription, a webhook or a blocking queue read is usually cheaper and more responsive. If you keep the schedule, cap the work with a timeout shorter than the interval.
The crontab line
*/10 * * * * * /usr/local/bin/your-job.sh >> /var/log/your-job.log 2>&1Send the output to a log you will read. By default cron mails it, and on a host with no mail transport that mail is silently dropped. See the crontab guide for the surrounding syntax.
Related schedules
| Expression | Schedule |
|---|---|
*/30 * * * * * | Every 30 seconds |
0/10 * * * * ? | The same schedule in Quartz notation |
* * * * * | Every minute (standard cron) |
Build your own
If this page doesn't cover the schedule you need, compose it field by field in the visual builder, or paste an expression you already have into the explainer for a per-field breakdown. The examples library has sixty schedules in one place, and the guides cover crontab syntax, time zones, troubleshooting and production practices.