Cron expression for Every weekday at 9am
0 9 * * 1-5
Runs at 09:00 Monday through Friday, skipping weekends.
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 9 * * 1-5
- Workday-only reminders: standups, ticket triage, code-review nudges
- Syncs against systems that close on weekends — banks, ERPs, B2B partner APIs
- Daily invoice or order-confirmation batches for business customers
Use 0 9 * * 1-5 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 9 * * 1-5 /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 9 * * 1-5"
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 9 * * 1-5"
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 9 * * 1-5. 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 weekday at 9am schedules
1-5means Mon–Fri only where 0=Sunday (Linux cron, GitHub Actions). Quartz counts 1=Sunday, so the same digits there mean Sun–Thu. Porting this expression between systems is how Saturday emails happen.- Cron has no concept of public holidays — Jan 1st on a Wednesday still fires. If holiday sends are embarrassing, gate the job with a calendar lookup before doing the work.
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 9 * * 1-5 the right schedule?
Weekly cadence: Mondays at 9am. Harmless on weekends? Simplify to every day at 9am and delete the edge case.
Or use the interactive cron generator & explainer, read the complete cron syntax guide, or pick another common schedule: