Cron every weekday at 6pm (0 18 * * 1-5): next runs and syntax

What it is used for

End-of-working-day jobs: scaling down dev environments to save cost, daily close, sending a summary.

Field by field

Field	Value	Matches
Minute	`0`	0
Hour	`18`	18
Day of month	`*`	every value
Month	`*`	every value
Day of week	`1-5`	Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday

0 18 * * 1-5 /path/to/job

Next 10 run times

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

#	UTC	Your local time
1	`Wed 2026-11-11 18:00`	-
2	`Thu 2026-11-12 18:00`	-
3	`Fri 2026-11-13 18:00`	-
4	`Mon 2026-11-16 18:00`	-
5	`Tue 2026-11-17 18:00`	-
6	`Wed 2026-11-18 18:00`	-
7	`Thu 2026-11-19 18:00`	-
8	`Fri 2026-11-20 18:00`	-
9	`Mon 2026-11-23 18:00`	-
10	`Tue 2026-11-24 18:00`	-

Things to watch with this schedule

If you scale environments down at 18:00 on weekdays, the Friday run leaves them off all weekend, which is usually what you want; make sure a matching 'scale up' job runs on Monday morning.

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-weekday-at-6pm
spec:
  schedule: "0 18 * * 1-5"
  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 18 * * 1-5'   # UTC

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

systemd timer

The equivalent OnCalendar= value is Mon..Fri *-*-* 18:00:00. Check it with systemd-analyze calendar 'Mon..Fri *-*-* 18:00:00', which prints the next elapse time. Persistent=true runs a missed job after downtime, which classic cron never does.

[Unit]
Description=Every weekday at 6pm

[Timer]
OnCalendar=Mon..Fri *-*-* 18:00:00
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 18 ? * MON-FRI *)

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 18 ? * MON-FRI

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

Every Tuesday and Thursday at 9am 0 9 * * 2,4
Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 9am 0 9 * * 1,3,5
Every Sunday at 3am 0 3 * * 0
Every Saturday and Sunday at midnight 0 0 * * 6,0
Every Friday at midnight 0 0 * * 5
Every Monday at midnight 0 0 * * 1
All cron schedules and the field reference
Build a crontab line from this schedule