Cron Expression for the Last Day of the Month

At 00:00 on the last day of each month, whether that is the 28th, 29th, 30th or 31st. 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 28-31 * *

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0minute0hour28-31day (month)*month*day (week)

At 00:00 on the last day of each month, whether that is the 28th, 29th, 30th or 31st.

Standard cron has no “last day” value, so this runs on days 28–31 with a date check. The run times below apply that check.

12-hour clock

Next runs

Next 7 days

Use it on your platform

Runs as writtenRuns in your time zone

crontab -e

# ┌───────────── 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 28-31 * *  [ "$(TZ=UTC date -d tomorrow +\%d)" = 01 ] && /path/to/my-job.sh >> /var/log/my-job.log 2>&1

Cron has no last-day-of-month value, so the job starts on days 28–31 and the date check lets only the last one through. date -d tomorrow is GNU date; on macOS use date -v+1d +\%d.
The check sets TZ itself: CRON_TZ only decides when cron starts the job, not the time zone the command sees.
Inside a crontab line % starts a new line of input, so it must be escaped as \%.
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

Standard cron has no value for the last day of the month, so the usual expression is 0 0 28-31 * * with a guard in the command that only continues when tomorrow is the 1st. Cron starts the job on every candidate day from the 28th to the 31st, and the guard lets only the real last day through. Cloudflare Workers, AWS EventBridge and Quartz accept L for the last day instead.

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

How to use this schedule

1Copy 0 0 28-31 * * with the Copy expression button.
2Check Next runs in your time zone to confirm it fires when you expect, including around daylight saving changes.
3Pick your platform under Use it on your platform and copy the ready-made crontab line, workflow, manifest or timer.
4Need a different time or day? Click Customize to open it in the cron expression generator and change any field.

How do I run a cron job on the last day of the month?

Months end on the 28th, 29th, 30th or 31st, and the five standard cron fields can't say "whichever comes last". 0 0 31 * * skips five months a year, and 0 0 L * * is rejected by Linux crontab. The portable answer is to schedule every possible last day and filter in the command:

# crontab: last day of the month at 00:00 (GNU date; escape % as \% in crontab)
0 0 28-31 * * [ "$(date -d tomorrow +\%d)" = 01 ] && /path/to/job

date -d tomorrow +%d prints tomorrow's day of the month. Only on the real last day is that 01, so the && lets the job run exactly once a month. On macOS and BSD, date uses a different flag: date -v+1d +%d. Inside a script file, write a plain %d; the backslash is only needed in the crontab line itself, where an unescaped % turns the rest of the line into standard input.

Which schedulers support L for the last day?

Several schedulers extend cron with L (last) in the day-of-month field, so no guard is needed:

Scheduler	Last day of the month at 00:00
Cloudflare Workers Cron Triggers	`0 0 L * *`
AWS EventBridge	`cron(0 0 L * ? *)`
Quartz and Spring (seconds first)	`0 0 0 L * ?`
systemd timer	`OnCalendar=-~01 00:00:00`
Linux crontab, Kubernetes, GitHub Actions, Vercel	Not supported: use `28-31` plus a guard

If you control the job, there is an even simpler design: run at 00:00 on the 1st and process the month that just ended. The data is complete, there is no guard to get wrong, and the schedule is the plain 0 0 1 * * used for every month, which every scheduler understands.

What does each field in 0 0 28-31 * * mean?

Field	Value	Allowed	Meaning
Minute	`0`	0–59	at minute 0 (on the hour)
Hour	`0`	0–23	at hour 0 (midnight)
Day of month	`28-31`	1–31	days 28 through 31 of the month
Month	`*`	1–12, JAN–DEC	every month
Day of week	`*`	0–7 (0 and 7 are Sunday), SUN–SAT	every day of the week

Read together: At 00:00 on the last day of each month, whether that is the 28th, 29th, 30th or 31st.

The day-of-month range 28-31 only narrows the candidates; a date check in the command (or L on platforms that support it) picks the real last day.

How do I adjust 0 0 28-31 * * to my own schedule?

Small edits to 0 0 28-31 * * cover most real-world needs:

Expression	What it does
`0 0 L * *`	Last day of the month on Cloudflare Workers (not valid in crontab)
`0 0 1 * *`	The 1st at midnight, processing the month that just ended
`59 23 28-31 * *`	With the same guard, runs in the final minute of the month
`0 0 31 * *`	Not a last-day schedule: only the seven months that have a 31st
`0 0 28,29 2 *`	The candidate last days of February

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: First Monday of the month · Every month · Every quarter · Every year

Browse all schedules in the cron schedule library.

How do I run 0 0 28-31 * * in crontab, GitHub Actions, Kubernetes and the cloud?

Platform	Write it as	Time zone
Linux crontab	`0 0 28-31 * * + date check`	Server's time zone; `CRON_TZ=` in cronie
GitHub Actions	`- cron: "0 0 28-31 * *" + date check`	UTC by default; add `timezone:` (IANA name)
Kubernetes CronJob	`schedule: "0 0 28-31 * *" + date check`	Set `timeZone:` (1.27+)
Cloudflare Workers	`0 0 L * *`	UTC only; supports `L` and `#` (Monday is 2)
Vercel Cron Jobs	`0 0 28-31 * * + date check`	UTC only; more than once a day needs Pro (Hobby: once a day)
AWS EventBridge Scheduler	`cron(0 0 L * ? *)`	Takes a time zone; legacy scheduled rules are UTC only
systemd timer	`OnCalendar=-~01 00:00:00`	Add a zone after the time, e.g. `Europe/London`

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

# Set TZ to the zone your calendar runs in; CRON_TZ doesn't reach the command.
0 0 28-31 * *  [ "$(TZ=UTC date -d tomorrow +\%d)" = 01 ] && /path/to/job.sh

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 28-31 * *?

In a crontab line, % must be written \%. Without the backslash, cron cuts the command at the first % and the guard silently breaks.
date -d tomorrow is GNU date syntax. macOS and BSD use date -v+1d, and minimal container images may ship a different date, so test the guard where the job actually runs.
The guard uses the server's time zone. At 00:00 UTC on the 31st it is still the 30th in the Americas, so set TZ= for the date command if your month is defined in another zone.
At 00:00 on the last day, that day has only just started. If the job should see the whole month, run on the 1st instead, or use 59 23 with the same guard.
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

Linux crontab (Vixie cron and cronie) does not, and neither do Kubernetes, GitHub Actions or Vercel. Cloudflare Workers, AWS EventBridge, Quartz and Spring accept L in the day-of-month field.

Only seven months have a 31st, so the job would never run at the end of February, April, June, September or November. Cron skips months where the day does not exist instead of moving the run.

Cron starts the job on the 28th, 29th, 30th and 31st. The check prints tomorrow's day of the month and only lets the command continue when it is 01, which is true on exactly one of those days each month.

Use OnCalendar=*-*~01 00:00:00. The tilde replaces the dash before the day and counts back from the end of the month, so ~01 is the last day. Preview it with systemd-analyze calendar before enabling the timer.

Yes. Run the job at 00:00 on the 1st and have it process the previous month. The month's data is complete, and 0 0 1 * * works on every scheduler.

Last updated October 12, 2026 by the Playxoft engineering team.

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