ABSTRACT We report on the short- and long-term X-ray properties of the bright nearby Seyfert 2 galaxy NGC 2992, which was extensively observed with Swift, XMM–Newton, and NuSTAR. Swift targeted the source more than 100 times between 2019 and 2021 in the context of two monitoring campaigns. Both time-averaged and time-resolved analyses are performed, and we find that the short-to-long term spectral properties of NGC 2992 are dominated by a highly variable nuclear continuum. The source varied in the 2–10 keV energy band from 0.6 to 12 × 10−11 erg cm−2 s−1 during the two year long Swift monitoring. The fastest 2–10 keV flux change (by a factor of $∼ 60{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$) occurred on a time-scale of a few hours. The overall emission spectrum of the source is consistent with a power law-like continuum (Γ = 1.69 ± 0.01) absorbed by a constant line-of-sight column density NH = (7.8 ± 0.1) × 1021$\rm cm^{-2}$. The reflected emission is likely due to matter with an average column density NH = (9.6 ± 2.7) × 1022$\rm cm^{-2}$, thus NGC 2992 appears to have a globally Compton-thin circumnuclear medium. This scenario is fully supported by an independent analysis of the fractional variability and by XMM–Newton multiyear spectra.