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Cron Expression Examples

Over 50 ready-to-use cron job schedules organized by frequency and use case. All expressions are in Linux crontab format unless otherwise noted. Click any expression to load it in the generator.

Open Generator Syntax Guide

Every Few Minutes

ExpressionDescriptionNotes
* * * * *Every minute
*/2 * * * *Every 2 minutes
*/5 * * * *Every 5 minutesCommon for health checks
*/10 * * * *Every 10 minutes
*/15 * * * *Every 15 minutesCommon for queue processing
*/30 * * * *Every 30 minutes
0,30 * * * *At minute 0 and 30Equivalent to every 30 min

Hourly

ExpressionDescriptionNotes
0 * * * *Every hour, on the hour
0 */2 * * *Every 2 hours
0 */6 * * *Every 6 hoursAt 0:00, 6:00, 12:00, 18:00
0 */12 * * *Every 12 hoursAt midnight and noon
15 * * * *Every hour at minute 15
0 6,12,18 * * *At 6:00, 12:00 and 18:00Three times a day

Daily

ExpressionDescriptionNotes
0 0 * * *Every day at midnight00:00
0 1 * * *Every day at 1:00 AMGood for low-traffic backups
0 2 * * *Every day at 2:00 AMCommon for database backups
0 6 * * *Every day at 6:00 AMMorning tasks
0 9 * * *Every day at 9:00 AMBusiness hours start
0 12 * * *Every day at noon
30 18 * * *Every day at 6:30 PM
59 23 * * *Every day at 11:59 PMEnd of day tasks

Weekly

ExpressionDescriptionNotes
0 0 * * 0Every Sunday at midnight0 = Sunday
0 0 * * 1Every Monday at midnight
0 9 * * 1-5Every weekday at 9:00 AMMon to Fri
0 9 * * MON-FRIEvery weekday at 9:00 AMUsing names
0 0 * * 6,0Every weekend at midnightSat and Sun
0 8 * * MONEvery Monday at 8:00 AMWeekly report
30 17 * * FRIEvery Friday at 5:30 PMEnd of week tasks

Monthly

ExpressionDescriptionNotes
0 0 1 * *First day of every monthAt midnight
0 0 15 * *15th of every monthAt midnight
0 0 L * *Last day of every monthQuartz only
0 0 1,15 * *1st and 15th of every monthTwice monthly
0 9 1 * *First of month at 9:00 AMMonthly report
0 0 1 1 *January 1st at midnightYearly task

Cron Examples by Use Case

Database Backups

Daily backup at 2 AM
0 2 * * *
Every 6 hours
0 */6 * * *
Weekly full backup (Sunday 3 AM)
0 3 * * 0

Email & Notifications

Daily digest at 8 AM
0 8 * * *
Weekly newsletter (Monday 9 AM)
0 9 * * 1
Monthly report (1st at 9 AM)
0 9 1 * *

Cache & Cleanup

Clear cache every hour
0 * * * *
Delete temp files daily at 3 AM
0 3 * * *
Log rotation weekly
0 0 * * 0

CI/CD & Deployments

Nightly build at 1 AM
0 1 * * *
Dependency updates (Mon 6 AM)
0 6 * * 1
Security scan (Sunday 2 AM)
0 2 * * 0

API Sync & Scraping

Sync every 5 minutes
*/5 * * * *
Fetch rates hourly
0 * * * *
Full data sync daily at 4 AM
0 4 * * *

Monitoring & Health Checks

Ping every minute
* * * * *
Disk usage check every 15 min
*/15 * * * *
Daily status report at 7 AM
0 7 * * *

Cron Examples by Platform

Same schedule, different syntax. Here is how the most common platforms write cron expressions. The 5-field Linux format is the reference - everything else is a variation of it.

Schedule Linux / K8s Quartz / Spring AWS EventBridge node-cron
Every minute * * * * * 0 * * * * ? * * * * ? * * * * * *
Every 5 minutes */5 * * * * 0 */5 * * * ? */5 * * * ? * */5 * * * *
Every hour 0 * * * * 0 0 * * * ? 0 * * * ? * 0 * * * *
Daily at midnight 0 0 * * * 0 0 0 * * ? 0 0 * * ? * 0 0 * * *
Weekdays at 9 AM 0 9 * * 1-5 0 0 9 ? * MON-FRI 0 9 ? * MON-FRI * 0 9 * * 1-5
First of month 0 0 1 * * 0 0 0 1 * ? 0 0 1 * ? * 0 0 1 * *
Every Sunday 0 0 * * 0 0 0 0 ? * SUN 0 0 ? * 1 * 0 0 * * 0

A note on node-cron and pg_cron

node-cron uses standard 5-field Linux syntax. Some versions support a 6-field format with seconds as the first field - check your version's docs. pg_cron (PostgreSQL) also uses 5-field standard syntax and runs inside the database, so it respects the database server's timezone, not the OS timezone. Both are good options when you want to avoid setting up a crontab on the server.

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