Cron vs Crontab — What's the Difference?

"Cron" and "crontab" are often used interchangeably, but they refer to different things. Cron is the daemon (background service) that runs scheduled jobs. Crontab is the configuration file (or the command to edit it) where you define those schedules. Think of cron as the engine and crontab as the instruction sheet.

The crontab command manages per-user schedule files: crontab -e opens your crontab for editing, crontab -l lists your current entries, and crontab -r removes all your entries. The cron daemon reads these files and executes the scheduled commands at the specified times.

There's also a system-wide crontab at /etc/crontab and drop-in directories like /etc/cron.d/, /etc/cron.daily/, /etc/cron.hourly/, etc. System crontab files include an extra field for the username that runs the command. User crontabs (edited via crontab -e) run as the owning user automatically.