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

What it is used for

Nightly jobs that prepare data for a working day, such as building the morning report.

Field by field

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

0 0 * * 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	`Thu 2026-11-12 00:00`	-
2	`Fri 2026-11-13 00:00`	-
3	`Mon 2026-11-16 00:00`	-
4	`Tue 2026-11-17 00:00`	-
5	`Wed 2026-11-18 00:00`	-
6	`Thu 2026-11-19 00:00`	-
7	`Fri 2026-11-20 00:00`	-
8	`Mon 2026-11-23 00:00`	-
9	`Tue 2026-11-24 00:00`	-
10	`Wed 2026-11-25 00:00`	-

Things to watch with this schedule

00:00 on Monday runs at the very start of Monday, which is still Sunday night for people. If the job prepares Monday's data on Sunday evening, this is right; if it should process Friday's work, you may want 0 0 * * 2-6 (Tuesday to Saturday).

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-midnight
spec:
  schedule: "0 0 * * 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 0 * * 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 *-*-* 00:00:00. Check it with systemd-analyze calendar 'Mon..Fri *-*-* 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 weekday at midnight

[Timer]
OnCalendar=Mon..Fri *-*-* 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 ? * 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 0 ? * 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 Sunday at midnight 0 0 * * 0
Every Monday at 9am 0 9 * * 1
Every Friday at 5pm 0 17 * * 5
Every weekday at 9am 0 9 * * 1-5
Every Saturday at midnight 0 0 * * 6
Every Monday at midnight 0 0 * * 1
All cron schedules and the field reference
Build a crontab line from this schedule