Regex and cron

Cron Expression for Every 6 Hours

At 00:00, 06:00, 12:00 and 18:00 every day. Copy it, check the next runs in your time zone and grab a snippet for your platform.

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Cron expression

0 */6 * * *
Customize
0minuteMinute: at minute 0 (on the hour)*/6hourHour: every 6 hours: 00:00, 06:00, 12:00 and 18:00*day (month)Day of month: every day of the month*monthMonth: every month*day (week)Day of week: every day of the week

At 00:00, 06:00, 12:00 and 18:00 every day.

Time zone
Run times, the week view and the snippets use this zone. It starts as your device's zone.
Show times as 9:00 AM instead of 09:00.

Next runs

Each run in your selected time zone, with the same moment in UTC. Daylight saving changes follow cronie, the cron on most Linux servers.
Copy run times (ISO 8601)

Next 7 days

Each square is one hour of local time in your selected zone. Darker squares have more runs. Daylight saving changes are not drawn.

Use it on your platform

Copy-ready config for each scheduler. Dialects differ: some only run in UTC, some can't do seconds, Cloudflare and AWS number weekdays from 1 = Sunday. The snippet handles the conversion and says what changed.
A line for crontab -e on Linux or macOS (Vixie cron, cronie).on.schedule for a workflow, with the timezone field GitHub added in March 2026 (UTC when omitted).A CronJob manifest with the timeZone field (Kubernetes 1.27+).Cron Triggers in wrangler.toml for a Worker. Runs in UTC and numbers weekdays from 1 = Sunday.crons in vercel.json plus the route it calls. Runs in UTC.EventBridge Scheduler (any time zone, recommended by AWS) and a legacy EventBridge scheduled rule (UTC).A .timer unit with OnCalendar=, the systemd replacement for cron.
Runs as writtenRuns in your time zone
crontab -e
Copy crontab -eDownload my-job.crontab
# ┌───────────── minute (0–59)
# │ ┌─────────── hour (0–23)
# │ │ ┌───────── day of month (1–31)
# │ │ │ ┌─────── month (1–12)
# │ │ │ │ ┌───── day of week (0–6, Sunday = 0)
# │ │ │ │ │
# * * * * *  command
CRON_TZ=UTC
0 */6 * * *  /path/to/my-job.sh >> /var/log/my-job.log 2>&1
  • CRON_TZ=UTC is honored by cronie (Fedora, RHEL, Arch). Other cron daemons ignore it and use the server's time zone, so check timedatectl first.
  • Edit with crontab -e. Cron starts the next run even if the last one is still going; wrap the command in flock -n /tmp/my-job.lock to prevent overlaps.

Need scheduled jobs, queues and monitoring that never miss a run? Talk to our team

Quick answer

The cron expression for every 6 hours is 0 */6 * * *. The */6 step in the hour field matches hours 0, 6, 12 and 18, and the 0 in the minute field runs the job on the hour, so it fires four times a day at 00:00, 06:00, 12:00 and 18:00. The list form 0 0,6,12,18 * * * is identical.

  • Live next runs
  • Any time zone
  • Field-by-field breakdown
  • Seven platform snippets
  • Daylight saving aware

How to use this schedule

  1. 1Copy 0 */6 * * * with the Copy expression button.
  2. 2Check Next runs in your time zone to confirm it fires when you expect, including around daylight saving changes.
  3. 3Pick your platform under Use it on your platform and copy the ready-made crontab line, workflow, manifest or timer.
  4. 4Need a different time or day? Click Customize to open it in the cron expression generator and change any field.

What does 0 */6 * * * mean?

The hour step */6 divides the day into four equal blocks starting at midnight. The fixed minute of 0 runs the job on the hour, so you get four runs, each exactly six hours after the last, including the jump from 18:00 to the next midnight.

Six different phases are possible. A few useful ones:

ExpressionRuns at
0 */6 * * *00:00, 06:00, 12:00, 18:00
0 3-23/6 * * *03:00, 09:00, 15:00, 21:00
30 1-23/6 * * *01:30, 07:30, 13:30, 19:30
0 0,6,12,18 * * *Same as the first row, as a list

Midnight is when many daily jobs (backups, reports, log cleanup) already run, so the 3-23/6 phase is a popular way to keep a six-hourly job out of their way.

What is a six-hour schedule good for?

Four runs a day is the classic cadence for housekeeping that should not wait a full day but does not need to be frequent:

  • Checking certificate and domain expiry dates
  • Refreshing blocklists, GeoIP data or other reference datasets
  • Compacting or pruning logs and temporary files
  • Re-indexing search for content that changes a few times a day

Because there are only four runs, each one matters. Make the job idempotent (safe to run twice) and able to catch up if a run was missed while the server was down, because cron will not retry it. Also bound its runtime: a run that hangs for six hours collides with the next one.

Think about which zone the four times belong to. On a UTC server, 0 */6 * * * runs at 20:00, 02:00, 08:00 and 14:00 in New York during daylight time. Need more checkpoints? Try every 3 hours. Fewer? Every 12 hours.

What does each field in 0 */6 * * * mean?

FieldValueAllowedMeaning
Minute00–59at minute 0 (on the hour)
Hour*/60–23every 6 hours: 00:00, 06:00, 12:00 and 18:00
Day of month*1–31every day of the month
Month*1–12, JAN–DECevery month
Day of week*0–7 (0 and 7 are Sunday), SUN–SATevery day of the week

Read together: At 00:00, 06:00, 12:00 and 18:00 every day.

How do I adjust 0 */6 * * * to my own schedule?

Small edits to 0 */6 * * * cover most real-world needs:

ExpressionWhat it does
0 0,6,12,18 * * *The same schedule as an explicit list of hours
0 3-23/6 * * *Every 6 hours at 03:00, 09:00, 15:00 and 21:00
15 */6 * * *Every 6 hours at quarter past (00:15, 06:15, 12:15, 18:15)
0 */6 * * 1-5Every 6 hours on weekdays only
0 */12 * * *Every 12 hours, twice a day

Need something else? Click Customize at the top of the page to open this schedule in the cron expression generator and change any field.

Related schedules: Every 4 hours · Every 3 hours · Every 12 hours · Twice a day

Browse all schedules in the cron schedule library.

How do I run 0 */6 * * * in crontab, GitHub Actions, Kubernetes and the cloud?

PlatformWrite it asTime zone
Linux crontab0 */6 * * *Server's time zone; CRON_TZ= in cronie
GitHub Actions- cron: "0 */6 * * *"UTC by default; add timezone: (IANA name)
Kubernetes CronJobschedule: "0 */6 * * *"Set timeZone: (1.27+)
Cloudflare Workers0 */6 * * *UTC only; numbers weekdays from 1 = Sunday, so use names
Vercel Cron Jobs0 */6 * * *UTC only; more than once a day needs Pro (Hobby: once a day)
AWS EventBridge Schedulercron(0 */6 * * ? *)Takes a time zone; legacy scheduled rules are UTC only
systemd timerOnCalendar=*-*-* 0/6:00:00Add a zone after the time, e.g. Europe/London

In a crontab (crontab -e), the full line looks like this:

0 */6 * * *  /path/to/job.sh >> /var/log/job.log 2>&1

The live panel at the top of the page builds complete, copy-ready files for each platform (workflow, CronJob manifest, wrangler.toml, vercel.json, AWS CLI and systemd units) and can shift the schedule to UTC for platforms that need it.

What can go wrong with 0 */6 * * *?

  • Midnight is crowded with daily jobs on many servers. Shift the phase with 0 3-23/6 * * * so the 00:00 run doesn't compete with them.
  • 0 */6 * * * on a UTC server runs at 20:00, 02:00, 08:00 and 14:00 in New York during daylight time. If the times matter to people, decide which zone the schedule lives in.
  • A hung run blocks the next one if you use flock, and runs alongside it if you don't. Add a timeout too: timeout 5h your-command stops a stuck run before the next start.
  • */6 * * * * (step in the minute field) runs every 6 minutes, a frequent copy-paste slip.
  • In a zone with daylight saving time, a schedule with * in the minute or hour field follows the wall clock: the spring-forward night loses an hour of runs and the fall-back night repeats one. Servers on UTC never see this.

Frequently asked questions

Four times: at 00:00, 06:00, 12:00 and 18:00 in the time zone the scheduler uses.
Start the hour range at 3: 0 3-23/6 * * * runs at 03:00, 09:00, 15:00 and 21:00.
Only when the four runs are evenly spaced. 0 */6 * * * gives four runs six hours apart. For four specific times that are not evenly spaced, list them, for example 0 7,11,15,19 * * *.
Cron uses the server's time zone, which is often UTC. A UTC server runs at 00:00, 06:00, 12:00 and 18:00 UTC. Check the zone with the date command, or set CRON_TZ if your cron supports it.

Last updated by the Playxoft engineering team.

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