Regex and cron

Cron Expression for Every Quarter

At 00:00 on January 1, April 1, July 1 and October 1. Copy it, check the next runs in your time zone and grab a snippet for your platform.

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Cron expression

0 0 1 1,4,7,10 *
Customize
0minuteMinute: at minute 0 (on the hour)0hourHour: at hour 0 (midnight)1day (month)Day of month: on the 1st of the month1,4,7,10monthMonth: only in January, April, July and October*day (week)Day of week: every day of the week

At 00:00 on January 1, April 1, July 1 and October 1.

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 0 1 1,4,7,10 *  /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 quarter is 0 0 1 1,4,7,10 *. The month list 1,4,7,10 picks January, April, July and October, the 1 in the day-of-month field picks the first day, and 0 0 sets the time to 00:00. That is four runs a year, at the start of each calendar quarter. The step form 0 0 1 */3 * gives the same dates.

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

How to use this schedule

  1. 1Copy 0 0 1 1,4,7,10 * 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.

Should I write 1,4,7,10 or */3?

Both produce the same four dates. */3 in the month field steps through 1 to 12 in threes, starting at 1, which gives January, April, July and October. The list is longer but says exactly what it means, and it is easier to change later. Other quarter patterns:

Quarters start inExpression
January, April, July, October0 0 1 1,4,7,10 *
The same, written as a step0 0 1 */3 *
February, May, August, November0 0 1 2,5,8,11 * or 0 0 1 2-11/3 *
March, June, September, December0 0 1 3,6,9,12 * or 0 0 1 3-12/3 *

Many companies run a fiscal year that doesn't start in January, so confirm which months your finance team means by "quarter" before you ship a quarterly close job.

How do I run a job at the end of each quarter instead?

The last day of a quarter is March 31, June 30, September 30 or December 31. Those days differ, so one expression can't match all four without also matching other dates, but two can: 0 0 31 3,12 * and 0 0 30 6,9 *. In a crontab, add both lines with the same command.

Alternatively, run on the first day of the next quarter with 0 0 1 1,4,7,10 * and have the job process the quarter that just ended, which is usually what a quarterly report needs anyway: the data is complete and the schedule stays a single line. The same idea works for monthly jobs and yearly ones.

What does each field in 0 0 1 1,4,7,10 * mean?

FieldValueAllowedMeaning
Minute00–59at minute 0 (on the hour)
Hour00–23at hour 0 (midnight)
Day of month11–31on the 1st of the month
Month1,4,7,101–12, JAN–DEConly in January, April, July and October
Day of week*0–7 (0 and 7 are Sunday), SUN–SATevery day of the week

Read together: At 00:00 on January 1, April 1, July 1 and October 1.

How do I adjust 0 0 1 1,4,7,10 * to my own schedule?

Small edits to 0 0 1 1,4,7,10 * cover most real-world needs:

ExpressionWhat it does
0 0 1 */3 *The same four dates, written with a step
0 6 1 1,4,7,10 *6 AM on the first day of each quarter
0 0 1 2,5,8,11 *Quarters that start in February
0 0 31 3,12 *End of Q1 and Q4; pair it with 0 0 30 6,9 * for Q2 and Q3
0 0 15 1,4,7,10 *The 15th of the first month of each quarter

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 month · First Monday of the month · Every year · Last day of the month

Browse all schedules in the cron schedule library.

How do I run 0 0 1 1,4,7,10 * in crontab, GitHub Actions, Kubernetes and the cloud?

PlatformWrite it asTime zone
Linux crontab0 0 1 1,4,7,10 *Server's time zone; CRON_TZ= in cronie
GitHub Actions- cron: "0 0 1 1,4,7,10 *"UTC by default; add timezone: (IANA name)
Kubernetes CronJobschedule: "0 0 1 1,4,7,10 *"Set timeZone: (1.27+)
Cloudflare Workers0 0 1 1,4,7,10 *UTC only; numbers weekdays from 1 = Sunday, so use names
Vercel Cron Jobs0 0 1 1,4,7,10 *UTC only; Hobby runs it within the hour (±59 min)
AWS EventBridge Schedulercron(0 0 1 1,4,7,10 ? *)Takes a time zone; legacy scheduled rules are UTC only
systemd timerOnCalendar=*-1/3-01 00:00:00Add a zone after the time, e.g. Europe/London

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

0 0 1 1,4,7,10 *  /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 0 1 1,4,7,10 *?

  • */3 in the month field starts at January because months start at 1. For quarters that start in another month, use a list or a range with a step such as 2-11/3.
  • A quarterly job runs only four times a year, so a broken script can go unnoticed for three months. Test it on a temporary schedule and alert on failure.
  • If the server is down at 00:00 on the 1st, plain cron won't retry until next quarter. Use anacron, a systemd timer with Persistent=true, or a monitor that expects the run.
  • Quarter boundaries are dates in a particular time zone. A job at 00:00 UTC on April 1 runs on the evening of March 31 in the Americas.
  • On UTC-only platforms (Cloudflare Workers, Vercel, legacy EventBridge rules), the local time this runs at moves by an hour when daylight saving time starts or ends. Use GitHub's timezone:, Kubernetes timeZone, EventBridge Scheduler or cronie's CRON_TZ to pin it to local time.

Frequently asked questions

0 0 1 */3 * runs at midnight on the first day of January, April, July and October. The list form 0 0 1 1,4,7,10 * is equivalent.
List the months you need, for example 0 0 1 2,5,8,11 * for quarters starting in February, or use a range with a step such as 2-11/3.
Use two lines with the same command: 0 0 31 3,12 * for March and December, and 0 0 30 6,9 * for June and September.
Temporarily schedule the same command a few minutes ahead, confirm it runs correctly under cron, then restore the quarterly expression. A next-run preview also confirms the four quarterly dates before you deploy.

Last updated by the Playxoft engineering team.

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