What is the cron expression for every sunday at midnight?

The cron expression for every sunday at midnight is "0 0 * * 0". Runs at 00:00 every Sunday — a common weekly-job slot.

What should I watch out for when running a cron job every sunday at midnight?

Sunday 00:00 is Saturday night — the deadest hour in consumer traffic, which is exactly why it’s good for heavy work and bad for noticing failures: ops are asleep and the next business-hours look is 30+ hours away. Monitor this one. Sunday is 0 in POSIX cron; 7 is a Vixie extension. If the line might ever move to BusyBox, Alpine, or an embedded cron, write 0.

Cron expression for Every Sunday at midnight

0 0 * * 0

Runs at 00:00 every Sunday — a common weekly-job slot.

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 0 * * 0`

Weekly full backup, with nightly incrementals the rest of the week
Rebuilding search indexes and database statistics in the quietest traffic window
Preparing data for Monday-morning reports

Use `0 0 * * 0` 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 0 * * 0 /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 0 * * 0"

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 0 * * 0"

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 0 * * 0. 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 sunday at midnight schedules

Sunday 00:00 is Saturday night — the deadest hour in consumer traffic, which is exactly why it’s good for heavy work and bad for noticing failures: ops are asleep and the next business-hours look is 30+ hours away. Monitor this one.
Sunday is 0 in POSIX cron; 7 is a Vixie extension. If the line might ever move to BusyBox, Alpine, or an embedded cron, write 0.

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 →

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

Output a human reads should arrive at Monday 9am — prep here, send there. If nightly is cheap enough, daily at midnight simplifies the mental model.

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