Cron every 3 minutes: the expression, explained, in Laravel

The cron expression for “every 3 minutes” is */3 * * * *. This page shows what each field does, the next five times it will fire, the mistake most people make with it, and a working Laravel example you can paste.

The expression

*/3 * * * *

Field	Value	Meaning
minute	*/3	every 3 minutes, starting at 0
hour	*	every hour
day of month	*	every day of month
month	*	every month
day of week	*	every day of week

Next five runs (UTC, from now)

2026-09-17 23:00 UTC
2026-09-17 23:03 UTC
2026-09-17 23:06 UTC
2026-09-17 23:09 UTC
2026-09-17 23:12 UTC

Mistakes people make with this schedule

"*/3" means minutes 0, 3, 6… of the hour, not "3 minutes after the last run". The count restarts at the top of every hour, so a run at :04 is impossible with this expression.
Assuming the server clock is your clock. Cron runs in the machine’s timezone unless the runtime says otherwise; the examples here are UTC.
No lock around a job that might overlap itself, and no alert when it silently stops. That second one is what Supercrontab is for.

Run it in your stack

Linux crontab Laravel WordPress Next.js / Vercel Node.js Python Docker GitHub Actions

// routes/console.php
Schedule::command('reports:send')
    ->cron('*/3 * * * *')
    ->timezone('UTC')
    ->withoutOverlapping();

Requires the scheduler itself to be started every minute: `* * * * * php artisan schedule:run`.

Questions

Does */3 * * * * run in my local time?

Only if the scheduler is configured for it. crontab uses the system timezone; Vercel and GitHub Actions always use UTC; Laravel and node-cron take a timezone option. In Supercrontab the timezone is a field on the job.

What if the previous run is still going?

Classic cron starts the next run anyway. Add a lock (flock on Linux, withoutOverlapping() in Laravel) or let Supercrontab skip the tick while the previous request is open.

Is there a shorter way to write this?

No. The five-field form is the shortest portable version.