What is the cron expression for every day at 2pm?

The cron expression for every day at 2pm is "0 14 * * *". Runs once a day at 2pm, every day.

What should I watch out for when running a cron job every day at 2pm?

2pm is 14:00, and the AM/PM trap bites hardest here. 0 14 * * * is right; 0 2 * * * silently runs at 2am instead. Many "my report ran overnight" bugs are exactly this off-by-twelve mistake — verify the hour field is 14. Mid-afternoon means you're fighting for shared resources. A report query at 2pm hits the same DB serving live users; a long-running aggregation can lock tables and stall checkout. Run reports against a read replica or snapshot, not the primary.

Cron expression for Every day at 2pm

0 14 * * *

Runs once a day at 2pm, every day.

Next 5 runs (your local time)

These are shown in your browser’s timezone. The job itself runs in the scheduler’s timezone — often UTC — so the real run time can differ.

What people actually schedule with `0 14 * * *`

Generating an afternoon sales or ops report once the morning's transactions have settled and reconciled
Kicking off a content re-index or cache warm so updated pages are fresh before the evening traffic peak
Pulling a daily exchange-rate or pricing feed that vendors publish on a fixed early-afternoon schedule

Use `0 14 * * *` on your platform

It’s the same 5-field expression everywhere — what changes is where you put it and which timezone it runs in.

Linux / crontab

0 14 * * * /path/to/your-command

Runs in the server’s local timezone — check it with timedatectl. Full field reference: crontab(5) man page.

GitHub Actions

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: "0 14 * * *"

GitHub Actions always runs scheduled jobs in UTC — there is no timezone setting, and runs can be delayed under load (official docs).

Kubernetes CronJob

spec:
  schedule: "0 14 * * *"

Defaults to UTC. Set spec.timeZone (Kubernetes 1.27+) for a specific zone — see the CronJob docs.

Quartz / Spring `@Scheduled`

Quartz uses 6 fields (seconds first): 0 0 14 * * *. Watch out: Quartz day-of-week is 1=SUN … 7=SAT (not 0–6), and day-of-month / day-of-week use ? — double-check if your schedule touches those fields (Quartz cron reference).

Gotchas with every day at 2pm schedules

2pm is 14:00, and the AM/PM trap bites hardest here. 0 14 * * * is right; 0 2 * * * silently runs at 2am instead. Many "my report ran overnight" bugs are exactly this off-by-twelve mistake — verify the hour field is 14.
Mid-afternoon means you're fighting for shared resources. A report query at 2pm hits the same DB serving live users; a long-running aggregation can lock tables and stall checkout. Run reports against a read replica or snapshot, not the primary.
DST shifts the wall-clock meaning twice a year. Even at 2pm (nowhere near the 2am DST boundary), if you store the schedule in UTC the local trigger time jumps an hour each spring/fall. Pin CRON_TZ to a named zone so 2pm stays 2pm local across the switch.

Will you know if this job silently fails?

Cron jobs fail quietly — a server reboots, a path changes, or an error code is ignored — and nobody notices until the data is missing. A cron monitor (a dead-man’s-switch) alerts you when a scheduled job does not check in on time.

Monitor your cron jobs with UptimeRobot →

Disclosure: this is an affiliate link — we may earn a commission if you sign up, at no extra cost to you.

Is `0 14 * * *` the right schedule?

If you only need the report "by end of day" and not specifically at 2pm, every day at 5pm lets the full day's data accumulate first; pick 2pm only when downstream consumers need it before the afternoon is over.

Or use the interactive cron generator & explainer, read the complete cron syntax guide, or pick another common schedule: