Cron expression for every 3 minutes
Every 3 minutes
*/3
minute
*
hour
*
day (month)
*
month
*
day (week)
Every 3 minutes
Try this expression in the interactive tool:
Open in cron explainer →Next 10 scheduled runs
#1Thu, 16 Apr 2026, 00:09
#2Thu, 16 Apr 2026, 00:12
#3Thu, 16 Apr 2026, 00:15
#4Thu, 16 Apr 2026, 00:18
#5Thu, 16 Apr 2026, 00:21
#6Thu, 16 Apr 2026, 00:24
#7Thu, 16 Apr 2026, 00:27
#8Thu, 16 Apr 2026, 00:30
#9Thu, 16 Apr 2026, 00:33
#10Thu, 16 Apr 2026, 00:36
Common use cases
Every 3 minutes is a niche but practical interval. It fires 20 times per hour and 480 times per day. This frequency works well for tasks where 5 minutes is too long to wait but every minute is wasteful.
Common applications include draining message queues in small batches, polling external APIs that have moderate rate limits, and running lightweight data synchronisation between microservices. Some CI/CD systems use this interval for checking repository activity and triggering builds.
Platform-specific syntax
crontab
*/3 * * * * /path/to/script.shAWS EventBridge
rate(3 minutes)GitHub Actions
schedule:
- cron: '*/3 * * * *'Kubernetes
schedule: "*/3 * * * *"Technical breakdown
The expression */3 * * * * has five fields: minute=*/3, hour=*, day (month)=*, month=*, day (week)=*. Every 3 minutes.
Frequently asked questions
How many times per day does */3 run?
480 times. There are 1,440 minutes in a day divided by 3 = 480 executions. It fires at minutes 0, 3, 6, 9, 12, ... 57 each hour.