Learn / Cron Expressions / Common Schedules
Lesson 3 of 6

Common Schedules

You now know the five fields. The fastest way to get comfortable is to see them in action — a handful of schedules you'll reuse constantly, each one recognizable at a glance once you've seen it a few times.

💡 The Bottom Line

A small set of patterns covers the vast majority of real-world scheduling needs: every minute, every hour, daily, weekly, and monthly. Learn to recognize these on sight, and you'll be able to read (and write) most cron expressions without reaching for a reference.

The patterns you'll use most

* * * * *        Every minute
0 * * * *        Every hour, on the hour
0 0 * * *        Every day at midnight
0 9 * * 1        Every Monday at 9am
0 0 1 * *        First day of every month, at midnight
*/15 * * * *     Every 15 minutes

📋 Reading each one

  • * * * * * — every field is *, so it fires every single minute, all day, every day. Rare in production (very noisy), but common in examples and quick tests.
  • 0 * * * * — minute is fixed at 0, everything else is *: fires once per hour, right at the top of the hour.
  • 0 0 * * * — minute 0, hour 0: fires once a day, at midnight.
  • 0 9 * * 1 — minute 0, hour 9, day-of-week 1 (Monday): fires once a week, 9am every Monday.
  • 0 0 1 * * — minute 0, hour 0, day-of-month 1: fires once a month, at midnight on the 1st.
  • */15 * * * * — the /15 is a step value (more in Lesson 4): fires every 15 minutes, all day.

⚠️ Watch Out

A schedule like 0 9 * * 1 ("every Monday at 9am") only fires once a week, not once a day. It's a common misreading to see the 0 9 part and think "daily at 9am" — always check the day-of-week and day-of-month fields too, since they're what narrows a schedule down from daily to weekly or monthly.

🙋 There Are No Dumb Questions

Q: How would I schedule something for every weekday (Monday through Friday), not just one day?
A: Using a range in the day-of-week field: 0 9 * * 1-5 means 9am, Monday through Friday. Ranges like this are covered in depth in the next lesson — for now, just recognize that a hyphen between two day-of-week numbers means "this range of days," not just one.

🔧 Try It Yourself

Without looking back at the list above, try writing the cron expression for "every hour, on the hour" from memory, then check it. Then try "the first day of every month at midnight." Getting these two from memory is a good sign the five-field pattern is starting to click.

✅ Quick Check

What does 0 9 * * 1 mean?

Next up: the special characters — comma, hyphen, and slash — that let you build far more precise and flexible schedules than * alone.

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