Minute Intervals

* Scheduling Guide

Minute-interval schedules are the shortest reliable cron granularity — standard cron has no seconds field, so one minute is the minimum. */5 * * * * fires every 5 minutes; */1 * * * * (or * * * * *) fires every minute. The key question before choosing a sub-five-minute interval is whether the job will reliably complete within that window: a job that takes 3 minutes to run on a */2 * * * * schedule will overlap with itself, potentially causing data corruption or resource exhaustion. Use a lock or a concurrency guard to prevent overlapping executions. For truly sub-minute work, cron is the wrong tool — consider a queue worker with a visibility timeout or a dedicated task scheduler that supports second-level precision.