Cron schedule reference

Cron every 6 hours

At minute 0 every hour.

0 */6 * * *

minute · hour · day of month · month · day of week

What this expression selects

At minute 0 every hour. This is a five-field calendar schedule, interpreted in the timezone you configure. It is not an instruction to wait a fixed duration after the last completion.

Common mistakes

The hour field */6 starts at midnight in the chosen timezone. A long-running job can overlap the next selected clock hour.

Next five runs in UTC

Computed at build time from 19 Oct 2026, 00:00 UTC. These are examples, not a live clock.

2026-10-19T06:00:00.000Z
2026-10-19T12:00:00.000Z
2026-10-19T18:00:00.000Z
2026-10-20T00:00:00.000Z
2026-10-20T06:00:00.000Z

A nearby variation

0 */12 * * *

At minute 0 every hour. Compare it with the expression above before copying; the selected fields change the calendar times.

Preview live runs in your timezone ↗

Monitor the completed work

Copy a private ping URL from a CronPulse check. Set its schedule to 0 */6 * * * in the same timezone as your job runner, and add grace for runtime and scheduling delay. Send success after the work finishes, not when it is enqueued.

Add success and exit-code reporting to crontab. Missing pings are evaluated once a minute; this is not sub-minute monitoring.

Questions

Which time zone does this use?

The examples use UTC. Choose your IANA time zone in the cron helper; your host scheduler must use the same zone.

Does cron wait for the last job to finish?

This expression chooses clock times. It does not provide locking or an elapsed timer. Configure concurrency in the job runner.

Related schedules

Cron every 12 hours

Cron every weekday

One URL. A little more peace of mind.

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