HTTPfy

Every 6 hours at a quiet minute

At 00:17, 06:17, 12:17 and 18:17 every day.

17 */6 * * * Open in Crontab Generator
1,460runs in the next 365 days
28runs per week
6 hoursbetween every run
06:17next run, Wed 11 Nov UTC

What it is used for

The same 6-hour cadence as 0 */6 * * *, moved to an uncrowded minute. Recommended for jobs on shared schedulers such as GitHub Actions or hosted cron services.

Field by field

FieldValueMatches
Minute1717
Hour*/60, 6, 12, 18
Day of month*every value
Month*every value
Day of week*every value
 
17 */6 * * * /path/to/job

Next 10 run times

Computed when this page loaded (2026-11-11 02:24 UTC), assuming the scheduler runs in UTC.

#UTCYour local time
1Wed 2026-11-11 06:17
2Wed 2026-11-11 12:17
3Wed 2026-11-11 18:17
4Thu 2026-11-12 00:17
5Thu 2026-11-12 06:17
6Thu 2026-11-12 12:17
7Thu 2026-11-12 18:17
8Fri 2026-11-13 00:17
9Fri 2026-11-13 06:17
10Fri 2026-11-13 12:17

Things to watch with this schedule

  • Any minute that is not 0, 15, 30 or 45 avoids the busiest moments of shared queues.

Kubernetes CronJob

Kubernetes uses the same five fields. Set spec.timeZone (stable since Kubernetes 1.27), otherwise the schedule follows the time zone of kube-controller-manager.

apiVersion: batch/v1
kind: CronJob
metadata:
  name: every-6-hours-at-offset
spec:
  schedule: "17 */6 * * *"
  timeZone: "Etc/UTC"
  concurrencyPolicy: Forbid
  startingDeadlineSeconds: 300
  jobTemplate:
    spec:
      template:
        spec:
          restartPolicy: OnFailure
          containers:
            - name: job
              image: debian:bookworm-slim
              command: ["/bin/sh", "-c", "/app/run-job.sh"]

GitHub Actions

Workflow schedules use five-field cron in UTC and run only from the default branch.

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: '17 */6 * * *'   # UTC

jobs:
  run:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - run: ./run-job.sh

systemd timer

The equivalent OnCalendar= value is *-*-* 00/6:17:00. Check it with systemd-analyze calendar '*-*-* 00/6:17:00', which prints the next elapse time. Persistent=true runs a missed job after downtime, which classic cron never does.

[Unit]
Description=Every 6 hours at a quiet minute

[Timer]
OnCalendar=*-*-* 00/6:17:00
Persistent=true

[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target

AWS EventBridge

EventBridge rules take six fields (minute, hour, day-of-month, month, day-of-week, year) in UTC; EventBridge Scheduler can use a time zone. One of day-of-month and day-of-week must be ?, and day-of-week runs 1-7 from Sunday, so names are used here.

cron(17 0/6 * * ? *)

Quartz Scheduler (Java)

Quartz adds a leading seconds field and needs ? in either day field; days of the week are 1 (SUN) to 7 (SAT).

0 17 0/6 * * ?

Spring's @Scheduled(cron = ...) also uses six fields, but numbers days of the week 0-7 with Sunday as 0 or 7, like Unix cron; the names shown above work in both.

Related schedules