HTTPfy

Every quarter

At 00:00 on 1 January, 1 April, 1 July and 1 October: 4 runs a year.

0 0 1 */3 * Open in Crontab Generator
4runs in the next 365 days
90 days / 92 daysshortest / longest gap between runs
00:00next run, Fri 01 Jan UTC

What it is used for

Quarterly reports, access reviews, key rotation and other compliance tasks.

Field by field

FieldValueMatches
Minute00
Hour00
Day of month11
Month*/3January, April, July, October
Day of week*every value
 
0 0 1 */3 * /path/to/job

Next 10 run times

Computed when this page loaded (2026-11-11 02:23 UTC), assuming the scheduler runs in UTC.

#UTCYour local time
1Fri 2027-01-01 00:00
2Thu 2027-04-01 00:00
3Thu 2027-07-01 00:00
4Fri 2027-10-01 00:00
5Sat 2028-01-01 00:00

Things to watch with this schedule

  • */3 in the month field starts at month 1, giving 1,4,7,10. If your fiscal quarters start in February, write the months explicitly: 0 0 1 2,5,8,11 *.

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-quarter
spec:
  schedule: "0 0 1 */3 *"
  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. Runs at minute 0 are the most likely to be delayed or dropped when GitHub is busy; an odd minute such as 7 or 23 starts more reliably.

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: '0 0 1 */3 *'   # UTC

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

systemd timer

The equivalent OnCalendar= value is *-01/3-01 00:00:00. Check it with systemd-analyze calendar '*-01/3-01 00:00:00', which prints the next elapse time. Persistent=true runs a missed job after downtime, which classic cron never does.

[Unit]
Description=Every quarter

[Timer]
OnCalendar=*-01/3-01 00:00:00
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(0 0 1 1/3 ? *)

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 0 0 1 1/3 ?

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