Cron Expression for Every 10 Minutes
To run a cron job every 10 minutes, use */10 * * * *. That's six runs an hour and 144 a day, at :00, :10, :20, :30, :40 and :50 past each hour, every day of the week.
Every 10 minutes.
*/10 * * * *Standard 5-field crontab syntax. Day of month and day of week are OR'd when both are set.
What it does
Ten divides sixty evenly, which is why the schedule stays regular across the hour boundary. The step /10 applied to the full minute range * (0–59) selects 0, 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50; after :50 the next match is :00 of the following hour, ten minutes later. A step that doesn't divide 60 behaves differently — */7 runs at :56 and then again at :00, only four minutes apart.
A ten-minute cadence suits work where a short delay is fine but an hour is too long: rebuilding a sitemap or search index after content edits, pulling exchange rates or stock levels from a supplier feed, clearing out temporary files, or retrying failed webhook deliveries. Compared with every five minutes it halves the number of runs — useful when each run calls a rate-limited API or wakes a sleeping database.
If the job only needs to run during working hours, restrict the hour field rather than adding checks to the script: */10 9-17 * * 1-5 runs every ten minutes from 9:00 to 17:50, Monday to Friday.
How */10 * * * * works, field by field
| FIELD | VALUE | MEANING |
|---|---|---|
| Minute | */10 | every 10 minutes (0, 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50) |
| Hour | * | every hour |
| Day of month | * | every day of the month |
| Month | * | every month |
| Day of week | * | every day of the week |
Put together, cron reads */10 * * * * as: “Every 10 minutes.”
To see further ahead, paste the expression into the cron calculator, which lists the next ten run times and counts how many times the schedule runs in a year.
Frequently asked questions
What's the difference between */10 and 0,10,20,30,40,50?
Nothing — cron expands */10 in the minute field to exactly that list. The step form is shorter and harder to mistype, but both produce the same six runs per hour.
How do I run every 10 minutes starting at :05?
Use a range with a step: 5-59/10 * * * * runs at :05, :15, :25, :35, :45 and :55. The range sets where counting starts; the step sets the gap.
Will a 10-minute cron job run if the server was off?
No. Standard cron doesn't catch up on missed runs — if the machine is down at :20, that run is skipped and the next one happens at :30. Use anacron, or a systemd timer with Persistent=true, if missed runs matter.