Regex and cron

Cron Expression for Every Hour

At minute 0 of every hour (00:00, 01:00 … 23:00), 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 * * * *
Customize
0minuteMinute: at minute 0 (on the hour)*hourHour: every hour*day (month)Day of month: every day of the month*monthMonth: every month*day (week)Day of week: every day of the week

At minute 0 of every hour (00:00, 01:00 … 23:00), 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 * * * *  /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.

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Quick answer

The cron expression for every hour is 0 * * * *. The 0 in the minute field pins the run to the top of the hour, and the asterisk in the hour field allows all 24 hours, so the job runs at 00:00, 01:00 and so on through 23:00. The @hourly macro means exactly the same thing in crontab and Kubernetes.

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

How to use this schedule

  1. 1Copy 0 * * * * 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.

Why is 0 * * * * hourly and * * * * * not?

An hourly schedule needs one fixed minute. Cron matches every field independently, so an asterisk in the minute field matches all 60 minutes of every hour. That is why * * * * * runs 1,440 times a day and 0 * * * * runs 24.

ExpressionRuns
0 * * * *At :00 of every hour, 24 times a day
@hourlyThe same, as a macro
0 */1 * * *The same, with a redundant step
* * * * *Every minute, 1,440 times a day
* 0 * * *Every minute from 00:00 to 00:59

The minute can be any value from 0 to 59. 17 * * * * is just as hourly as 0 * * * *; it simply fires at 00:17, 01:17 and so on.

Which minute should an hourly job use?

The top of the hour is the busiest minute on most systems, because 0 * * * * and @hourly are what everyone types first. Picking another minute is free and often helps:

  • Spread load. A fleet of servers calling the same API at :00 creates a spike; give each job its own minute.
  • Respect dependencies. If an upstream export finishes around :05, schedule the consumer at 10 * * * *.
  • Let the hour close. A job that reports on "the previous hour" should start a few minutes after it ends, e.g. 5 * * * *, so records written at :59 are included.

Need it only during the working day? See every hour during business hours. If hourly is more often than you need, every 2 hours or every 6 hours keep the same top-of-the-hour shape with fewer runs.

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

FieldValueAllowedMeaning
Minute00–59at minute 0 (on the hour)
Hour*0–23every hour
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 minute 0 of every hour (00:00, 01:00 … 23:00), every day.

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

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

ExpressionWhat it does
17 * * * *Every hour at 17 minutes past, away from the top-of-the-hour rush
0 9-17 * * *Every hour from 09:00 to 17:00
0 * * * 1-5Every hour on weekdays only
30 * * * *Every hour at half past
0 */2 * * *Every 2 hours

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 30 minutes · Every 2 hours · Every 3 hours · Business hours (every hour)

Browse all schedules in the cron schedule library.

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

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

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

0 * * * *  /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 * * * *?

  • Writing * * * * * or * 0 * * * instead of 0 * * * * is the classic hourly mistake: the first runs every minute, the second every minute between 00:00 and 00:59.
  • In a local time zone, the spring-forward day has only 23 hours to run in, and cronie runs an hourly job in both copies of the repeated hour when clocks fall back. Schedule in UTC if you need exactly 24 runs every day.
  • An hourly job that sometimes takes more than an hour will overlap its next run. Put flock -n /tmp/job.lock in front of the command.
  • Anything that processes the previous hour should start a few minutes after the hour, e.g. 5 * * * *, so late records from :59 are included.
  • 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

Yes. In crontab, cronie and Kubernetes the @hourly macro is shorthand for 0 * * * *, which runs at the start of every hour.
Put 30 in the minute field: 30 * * * * runs at 00:30, 01:30 and so on through 23:30.
The minute field is probably an asterisk. * * * * * matches every minute, so set the minute to a number, for example 0 * * * *.
24 times, once at the start of each hour. On daylight saving days in a local time zone it can be 23 or 25 times.

Last updated by the Playxoft engineering team.

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