Cron on the 31st of the month (0 0 31 * *): next runs and syntax

What it is used for

Shown here because it is a common mistake: people write 31 meaning 'the last day of the month'.

Field by field

Field	Value	Matches
Minute	`0`	0
Hour	`0`	0
Day of month	`31`	31
Month	`*`	every value
Day of week	`*`	every value

0 0 31 * * /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 2026-12-31 00:00`	-
2	`Sun 2027-01-31 00:00`	-
3	`Wed 2027-03-31 00:00`	-
4	`Mon 2027-05-31 00:00`	-
5	`Sat 2027-07-31 00:00`	-
6	`Tue 2027-08-31 00:00`	-
7	`Sun 2027-10-31 00:00`	-
8	`Fri 2027-12-31 00:00`	-

Things to watch with this schedule

Cron does not move a missing date to the end of the month; it simply skips months without that day. For month-end jobs see the last-day-of-the-month schedule, which uses 28-31 with a guard.
Never runs in February, April, June, September, November, because those months have no such day. Cron does not move the run to the last day of a shorter month.

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: on-the-31st-of-every-month
spec:
  schedule: "0 0 31 * *"
  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 31 * *'   # UTC

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

systemd timer

The equivalent OnCalendar= value is *-*-31 00:00:00. Check it with systemd-analyze calendar '*-*-31 00:00:00', which prints the next elapse time. Persistent=true runs a missed job after downtime, which classic cron never does.

[Unit]
Description=On the 31st of the month

[Timer]
OnCalendar=*-*-31 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 31 * ? *)

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 31 * ?

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

Last day of every month 0 0 28-31 * *
Every quarter 0 0 1 */3 *
Every month on the 15th 0 0 15 * *
Every 6 months 0 0 1 1,7 *
Twice a month (1st and 15th) 0 0 1,15 * *
Every year on January 1st 0 0 1 1 *
All cron schedules and the field reference
Build a crontab line from this schedule